


to yield with a grace to reason

by wroms



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Chapter 6, Slow Burn, au where javier and bill have a few more brain cells
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28767153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wroms/pseuds/wroms
Summary: After a tumultuous day culminating in the showdown at Beaver Hollow, Javier and Bill fled. But they decide to return to the remnants of their life, because it's the brotherly thing to do.
Relationships: Javier Escuella & Bill Williamson, Javier Escuella/Bill Williamson
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing fanfic, and my first time falling pretty hard for a rarepair, and those two things probably have a lot to do with each other. This is also the longest piece of fiction I've ever written, even though it isn't that long, but I had this idea and I love these guys and this game so much so here it is. Chapters will be pretty short, and I'm not sure if it'll be any good, but I am having a lot of fun writing for myself for the first time in many years. I'm (very nervously) proofreading everything multiple times, but there might be errors that slip through! 
> 
> Also, the title is a line from the last stanza of the poem "Reluctance," by Robert Frost:
> 
> Ah, when to the heart of man  
> Was it ever less than a treason  
> To go with the drift of things,  
> To yield with a grace to reason,  
> And bow and accept the end  
> Of a love or a season?

The feeling was familiar. His limbs were weightless, aching and numb all at once, and nestled into his ribcage was a sack of bricks that grew heavier with every thought he didn’t want to think about that ran through his mind. They were rattling around in there, confused and clumsy. Shards were chipping off every now and then, and they embedded themselves in his heart and his lungs and whatever else was in there with flashes of searing, stabbing pain. 

It was all those years ago, a lifetime ago, the beginning of those lowest days; alone in the night, on the road, in the world. No idea where to go or what to do with himself, not one place where he was wanted or where he wanted to be, and at the end of it all the only promising options were being drunk or dead. It was that again; it was that but worse, because the only good fortune he’d ever known had been these past seven years. No matter the unkindnesses he had both dished out and endured, or his inveterate loneliness, or the rumors, or the hunger, or the fighting; there had been moments of real, honest-to-God happiness, and how many men like him could claim that? Despite it all, despite himself, he had been gifted memories to hold close to his heart, days and nights that he swore to himself he would never forget, and he had been grateful for them. He had felt strong and important and needed and undeserving. He had been lucky and he had been grateful, and he knew as sure as the sun would rise that all of that was over, and it was so much worse than the first time around.

He hadn’t even realized it could get worse, and what a foolish oversight that was, because he should’ve known by now that things can always get worse. There were a lot of things he should’ve known by now. He felt like his chest was going to explode.

An hour had passed without any gunfire, and the only thing left ringing in his ears was his own frantic heartbeat. Even the horses sounded muffled, though he felt Brown Jack’s heaving breaths, and forced his hands to first unclutch and then to put away his rifle, his trembling hands sliding it imprecisely into the scratched-up leather holster on his saddle. He patted the thick neck, sweat drying in the chill of an early autumn night, and he assured his horse that everything was alright. 

They were at a walk now, on one of those tree-lined paths in the forests of Roanoke Ridge that all looked the same to him. They’d gone south out of Beaver Hollow, probably. Circled around the Pinkertons, took out the few that followed, and he never took in his surroundings well when running from the law, had gotten lost before, and might be now. But maybe lost didn’t matter so much when there wasn’t any place he was wanting to return to. 

Those were the thoughts that piled on the bricks. He tried once more to steady his breathing, to let out a sigh and look upward. Or downward. Anywhere but forward, anywhere but back. If it was over, it was over. If this is life, then so be it. But then, out of the darkness, cutting through the pulse that pounded in his head, came a voice.

“We should go back,” said Javier, hoarse and uncertain. 

Bill looked over, startled at the interruption; the man was on his left and had stopped a yard ahead, facing him, moonlight spilling over him through a gap in the trees. His little paint’s white splotches were jarringly bright where the light struck them. He was pulled into himself, bracing against the cold that ate through his blue blazer, face shadowed under his hat. That was the difference, Bill reminded himself, between then and now. Boaz stomped his foot at the ground and snorted as Brown Jack neared him. 

“I was thinking, we ought to go back,” Javier said slowly, resolving himself to the words he was saying as he looked up at Bill from under the brim of his bowler, “I think that- that we owe it to Susan at least, y’know. If the Pinkertons are still hanging around, we can wait ‘em out. And if anyone else is…well, we need to see,”

“You know how to think about all this?” Bill asked, surprised at how small his voice was. They hadn’t spoken much that night. Javier shook his head, a grin or a grimace flashing on his face. 

“No, not at all...” he trailed off tiredly and let out a huff, “I don’t know what happened there, but it wasn’t right, and I know nothing’s been right for a while now, but that wasn’t how it was before. I mean, Blackwater, that was bad, but at least we were still looking out for each other,”

“You think Morgan was right?” His chest tightened with the asking. He looked towards the sky. 

“About Micah? I don’t know, I just don’t know. All that time spent planning, all the help these past few months, it’s hard to believe it, but I like to think I know Arthur pretty well, five years and all, and he ain’t the type to lie about that. He doesn’t just make shit up. And I just think, Micah’s been questioning him and John for how long now? And only after he meets the Pinkertons he decides to flip it around to Micah? Doesn’t make much sense to me but I guess Dutch believes it,” Javier grimaced again, and readjusted his hold on the reins, “You got any clue?”

“No,” replied Bill; he usually didn’t. But he stared down at his saddle horn, and took deliberate breaths, and spoke slowly, and thought it through. He had to root through that swirling mass of fear and fish out something coherent enough to share, and as he fought to find the words and get them out, he wasn’t sure that he would succeed, “But I also known Morgan for a long time, and it’s like Dutch says, like you say, that _that_ makes us brothers. Micah ain’t ever been brotherly, he’s just a son of a bitch, but Dutch trusted him, and I trust Dutch. Morgan and them, they was always doubting, and- and disrespectful, but if he was right then he was _right_ , if Micah really was just stringing all us fools along. And if it was just down those two, ‘course I’d choose Morgan. But what I keep thinking is- why the hell would I know any better than Dutch? So I ain’t sure...that make any sense?”

He looked back at Javier, then ducked from his gaze again, looking over the man’s shoulder and into the woods that stretched out behind him. The other man stared up at him, brow furrowed, and as his expression shifted to one of approval he started slowly nodding.

“I hear you, I know what you mean. We gotta find him. I mean, all these years, and he’s our brother. Every job we went on, with our lives in each other's hands, that means something. How many scrapes has he pulled us out of? And if Dutch didn’t want to hear him out, well… I didn’t follow Dutch out of there. Neither did you. So, we listen to him. I know things went bad back there, but it all happened so quick, and that’s what he asked for. It’s what you do for a brother. That what you meant?”

“Well, yeah, probably. I think so,” Bill found himself agreeing, grateful to know where to go. It grounded him, being understood when he could hardly understand himself.

“So we’ll go back. See what happened, try to find Arthur, bury Ms. Grimshaw. We can do that,” With that, Javier urged Boaz into a trot, and said something sweet-sounding but too soft to make out to his disgruntled, exhausted stallion. He looked back to where Brown Jack was standing, tossing his long bangs as his rider absentmindedly stroked his neck. “You coming?”

“Of course I am,” said Bill. He had followed him out here, after all. Trusted his sense of direction, and his judgment, and his aim. That was the difference. So he turned around, under the moon and through the thick fog that had set in, and they headed north, probably.


	2. Chapter 2

So this was how it was. It had been a long day. Javier had lived through many long days, excruciating ones, terrifying ones, heartbreaking ones. In Guarma, in Blackwater, those early days in America, and so many of them back home. It always seemed to him that everything happened all at once. Days like those were a river he was swept up in, and how he got there didn’t matter, the push or the jump or the flood; it wasn’t important. What mattered was keeping your head above the water, running when you need to run, and fighting when you need to fight. 

Maybe later, when the water calmed, after you reached the shore, you’d reflect. The reflection of a mirror, in the gentle hours of the morning, the rhythms of routine that cleared his head. The reflections of still water, lots of it, to the horizon and even further. 

There’d be the phonograph playing in the evening, and even after the sun went down it was still too humid, but everyone was thankful for the slight relief, and he’d sit by the shore and think: was there anything better than a long conversation? He could talk to her about anything, and he did, and she listened. They would go back and forth: jokes and complaints, unanswerable questions, memories of those they had lost, stories about their homes before this one. And then they’d turned around to catch sight of the dancers, and laughed. Karen and Arthur were managing well enough to move in time with the music, but Dutch and Susan were much more surefooted as they twirled in the warm light of the lanterns. They watched for a minute, craning their necks and giggling at the sight, wondering aloud what Sean or Molly might think of it. And he had known better than to ask Tilly to dance; she was never partial to it, she much preferred listening to the music and watching others have their fun. But he’d thought about it. 

And when last he’d seen her, when she had pleaded to Dutch on Abigail’s behalf, he couldn’t even bring himself to look at her. Swept up. That was how this ended. He was staring at the hole in Susan’s stomach in the deep blue light of the almost-morning, and the light was catching on the ivory of that cameo pendant she always wore. He had his own share of treasured objects, and maybe one day they too would be lying in the dirt, hanging off his lifeless body. He’d fantasized, every now and then, about a grandchild reverently holding a gleaming revolver or a well-loved, ornate hunting knife. But what was more likely? Mary-Beth had told him once, conspiratorially, that the necklace had been a gift from Dutch, back when they were lovers. He wasn’t sure if he believed her, but it had been a nice story even if it wasn’t a true one. 

To love someone and leave her to rot, what a cruel story that would be. To run off with her killer, after decades of affection and respect and loyalty; he hoped that Mary-Beth might never hear of this one. But it seemed to him, as he gestured to Bill to dismount as well, that cruelty was often the truest story this world had to offer. It seemed to him, in that cold and dulled light, as the two men lifted her body and as he recalled her dying cries, that for every river bank he’d ever collapsed upon, relieved and exhausted, there must’ve been some precious piece of him that the current had carried away. 


	3. Chapter 3

“I think that’s Old Boy up ahead. And Cal,” 

The trails that last night’s conflict had left behind hadn’t been hard to find, though at every turn it seemed that someone had joined the chase or been taken out of it. The two outlaws were staying vigilant in case of any remaining Pinkertons, moving quietly and carefully through the predawn hour, though they hadn’t come across any that were still alive. The initial path that Javier had found led north out of Beaver Hollow and then across the river, and throughout this small, hilly section of forest, there were many sets of hoofprints that intersected each other, on the roads and in the woods. 

The simple plan they’d laid out seemed much more fraught with each mass they passed that lay dead on the ground. They had set Ms.Grimshaw where she wouldn’t be bothered by the elements or scavengers, delaying the few hours it’d take to bury her until after they could get a feeling of where the trail was headed. Javier had warned him that it could take a while, days even, to figure out where Morgan (or anyone else, for that matter) had gone. However, the sheer number of Pinkertons that had been in these woods had Bill’s faith in all of the gang making an escape waning. This was the death that they had somehow fled so many times before, and until he saw its aftermath, it hadn’t ever occurred to him just how miraculous that was. His heart had stopped about half a dozen times already because every other corpse looked, for a split second, like someone he knew. 

And now, he  _ knew _ that he knew these horses that they’d come across, the first sign that they were headed the right way. The little Arabian’s chestnut coat had dulled only a bit, and Old Boy’s flaxen mane was splayed brightly over the earth. Some of those mountain wildflowers gave them a pretty bed in the grass. They’d been shot trying to go up a slope, with the gunmen who’d taken their lives meeting a similar fate not 30 feet ahead. It had been quick, at least. Bill had been there when Boadicea was shot out from under Morgan, all those months ago in the snowstorm, and he had heard her scream pierce through the barrage of gunfire. She’d died pretty quick too, but that sound was heart-wrenching. No matter how short it really might’ve been, it had stayed in his mind far longer than it had any right to. It wasn’t fair at all, losing two horses in such little time. If he ever heard anything like that from Brown Jack even God himself wouldn’t be able to save the men who’d caused it. He and Morgan were alike in that respect, if how Morgan acted back then was anything to judge by. 

“I guess it’s safe to say they went on foot from here,” said Javier, lingering with Bill a few yards from the dead horses. Unfairness aside, it wasn’t a good sign. Slowly, reluctantly, he got off of an antsy Boaz and tethered the paint to a nearby tree. Wordlessly, Bill followed his lead after reassuring his own stallion. He wondered if his horse could recognize the others after they’d passed. He’d always greeted Old Boy kindly, though he hadn’t known Calypso for too long. If he could, it’d be cruel to make him look at them, so Bill oriented Brown Jack to face towards the little road they’d come from and hitched him in a spot where the grass grew thick. 

“I think they came up here, through these rocks,” Javier was knelt on the ground, examining footsteps that had trampled the grass and disturbed the loose, coarse gravel. It was hard to make out anything too distinct in the dull blue-gray light, but it seemed that the sky grew brighter every second and most of the clouds were clearing away. He turned to watch Bill hurry towards him, stepping around the horses, and slowly stood up, brushing dirt off the knee of his pants. He gestured up to the left, where a natural path was formed against the enormous juts of stone.“Looks to be a way up, lets out on the other side of this mountain, I bet.”

“Okay,” Bill nodded, “It’s worth following?”

“Maybe? If they got down the other side we could just circle around with the horses, and try to pick up the trail over there. Might be difficult to find it though, with the way the terrain is. We go up through here, we know for sure which path is theirs, even if we have to come back for the horses later,” he paused to yawn, “I think that’d be for the best, so we can head back to Beaver Hollow and know right where to pick up when we’re ready to keep going. It might be a long road ahead, even without their horses,”

“Alright, if it seems good to you,” Bill wasn’t too bad at tracking himself, but being on the trail with Javier always made it real obvious how the man had made a name for himself as a bounty hunter back in Mexico. He had the mind for it, not just the tracking itself, picking out clues in his surroundings, but for the strategy of it as well. Knowing not just where to go, but when and how. These were pretty fresh tracks here, with a less belligerent target at the end, but if it really did take days, Bill knew he’d be very thankful for the expertise. There was an itch in his mind, though, spurred on by seeing the boys’ horses, that said that a few days worth of tracking was too optimistic of an estimate. How long would it take to track them to a prison, or to gallows, or to an unmarked grave? But that was just unhelpful doubting, so he tried to ignore it. 

The two followed along that natural path, and indeed, the footprints continued to show themselves in the earth. After the path sloped briefly downward under an overhang, it shot up to the right, much steeper than it was before. And at the end of that, they were at a dead-end, or at least a mostly-dead end. Going straight, the path dropped off a few dozen feet, and to the right, the rock jutted nearly straight up. 

“Up there, you think?” asked Bill, looking skeptically at the less-sheer but still steep plane of rock to their left. The sun was nearly up and there was still so much to do. They could keep going for only so long on the shock of strength that such unfortunate circumstances had given them. Soon they would need to rest and eat and take care of the horses, and they hadn’t yet accomplished any of the plan: they hadn’t buried Grimshaw, they hadn’t talked to Morgan. But here they were, halfway up a mountain, and it seemed the only way forward was going even higher. Javier looked around again, and seeing no more than he saw the first time, shook his head. 

“Can’t imagine they took any of the other options,” he rubbed at his eyes, visibly steeled himself, and started up the slope. Bill followed.


	4. Chapter 4

They watched the sunrise. It glowed golden and warm, making all the land below look much more benevolent and welcoming than any of its inhabitants knew it to be. Out there in the distance, the Roanoke hills were faded to blue and silhouetted against a peach-pink horizon. Strokes of lavender kissed the tops of all the trees. 

Only for a moment, though, and then Javier turned back to what he didn’t want to see. He took the steps lightly, and even so, every footfall was a blade that pierced the gauzy morning. He knelt and felt the cold from the stone seep into his body, and though he had thought that he was full of dread the instant they had reached this outcropping, it seemed there was still room for a bit more. This was who he had come for, this was how it was. Flat on his back on the rock, face turned toward outward, toward the sky. 

The wheezing breaths surprised him, firstly in their existence and secondly in how harsh such a small noise could be. He placed a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, as gingerly as he would lay a hand on a soap bubble, or the fuzz of a dandelion, or a newborn kitten, or a butterfly’s wing. The worn canvas of the jacket was soft where it wasn’t stiffened with blood. He felt a few more breaths, thinking with each one that surely the next wouldn’t come. 

He had been a fool, today and yesterday and longer than he would like to admit. A fool, and a poor excuse for a friend, and only a sliver of a shadow of the brother that he had thought himself to be. For the past hours, since returning to Beaver Hollow and seeing Susan in such a state, that had been his sneaking suspicion. He had seen what her loyalty got her, and it was something very far from paradise. As he and Bill tried to piece together what happened in these woods, he had grown distracted, wondering at every turn what else he must have missed, or worse, ignored. Did it even matter if Micah had ratted them out? Did it matter if Dutch had gone crazy, or if Arthur had defied him? It made him sick, all of it, but the most sickening thought was the one he knew for certain: that the man he used to be was gone.

He had seen atrocities, from the time he was a child, committed by faceless men who enforced the will of those with money and power. He had grown up and sought to stop such injustices, and all the while wondered: what could you promise a man, or threaten him with, to get him to do such a thing? How could they so easily forsake humanity for greed? And how could everyone else just watch it happen? They had grown complacent, been made complicit, by way of the Church or by fear or by empty promises. 

When he had been chased out of his homeland, he had fled to the United States, and it was just as cruel as the place he had left, until, by chance, by fate, he had been taken in by a like-minded man who valued freedom and love; who mirrored his integrity and compassion. He had been freely given so many things, but most important to him was the hope; not just hope for himself and his new family, but the hope that came with knowing there was goodness to be found in the world, even if it was limited to these few small corners. (Even if it was limited to one man.) That was the promise he had needed, it seemed. It was that promise that made him work harder, and stay strong in the face of danger and uncertainty, and cross the lines he had set for himself when Dutch asked him to. Over the years, through the hardships, he had grown into this life, this loyalty. He had confused acts of greed for acts of love; he had forgotten what he had learned so viscerally, so young: that the compassion of a powerful man is only ever a facade. And when someone dared not show the fealty that their leader now demanded, he had been so willing to exchange brotherhood for a taste of self-righteous contempt. 

Yet despite all of that, despite the fact that it took this much devastation and utter disregard for the family they once had for Javier to realize what a fool he’d been, he had still imagined, for however briefly, a world in which he could talk things out and make it right again. He could brush aside the bodies and betrayals and listen to what he had once ignored. Everything had gone wrong, yet still he had held out some naive  _ hope _ that it might be made right again. 

But this moment, this was the sinking in that had finally sunk, the sneaking suspicion that accomplished its ambush: how could it ever have been made right, after so many of the people that he’d loved had been stolen away from him, or else fled in the dead of night without so much as a goodbye? How could it ever be okay again when everything that he now realized, and should’ve known then, said that they were right to do so? He would’ve called them traitors; he’d’ve mocked their misgivings and spat in their faces. And if Dutch had demanded, he would’ve left them for dead same as he’d left John. Left them for the pigs.

There was no pleading this time, no cursing, no begging for mercy or understanding or time, no crying out for a child or wife or  _ jesus christ don’t leave me _ . He wasn’t turning away from tearful and furious eyes; from a man bleeding helpless on the ground as a gunfight was raging. There was a beautiful sunrise, and he was going to feel a life quietly end under his hands, by his hands. 

_ Worry about that cough _ , he’d said, cruelly deflecting. Arthur’s face was purpled by bruises and spotted with blood. But Arthur had been beaten black and blue before, and certainly, it was that rattling cough and those wheezing breaths that were taking him down. His brother had been dying before his eyes for weeks now, and he had hardly spared it a vindictive thought.

Yet the breaths kept coming. They were still so faint, but in those long minutes that the sun took to emerge, it occurred to Javier that there was some small duty of kinship that he might still be able to fulfill. 

“He’s alive,” he tried to say but only whispered. He turned his head to see Bill still stood facing the sunrise, the man’s broad shoulders held tensely, and tried again, “He’s alive.”

And at the sound of a voice, the dying man’s head turned, and when Javier looked at him again he was met by bloodshot blue-green eyes. They stared at him but seemed not to be seeing him. There was no recognition, only a doleful vacancy. He had cried, at some point; tear tracks carved a path through the blood dried on his cheeks, over his nose. His face was so much more gaunt than Javier remembered, so pale. Slowly, Arthur lifted his right arm. He only managed to move it an inch, before it fell back to the ground. It must’ve been as heavy as the earth itself with the way it trembled. 

After suppressing his first shameful sense of revulsion, Javier shakily placed his hand atop the other man’s. It was so much colder than his shoulder had been. His knuckles were bruised and bloodied. Arthur’s face didn’t change, he just maintained that blank stare. _ I’m with you _ , Javier wanted to say, but couldn’t. 

“Jesus,” mumbled Bill, who now was looming over the two of them. 

Javier didn’t want to see him. He knew Bill well enough, and through tough enough situations, to know how he would be. It was hard enough to bear his own pain and guilt and shame with composure, and if he had to see it reflected so plainly in the body of someone else he feared it would all come crashing down and render him useless in the face of his mission. It seemed to him that Bill felt everything so intensely, too intensely, and sometimes in confusing configurations.

When Sean had been killed, he’d hardly ever seen Bill so red in the face and ready to snap, complaining loudly about his shoulder that had been grazed in the shootout, and it was that much worse for everyone at camp who in their own ways were mourning. But Javier knew better than to think the man heartless, and was a bit more gracious, and had been a bit more gracious still to ignore the way that the big man had silently wept as they worked in tandem to dig the kid’s grave. It was a pretty spot where you could see the water, and the sun was setting vivid pink and orange by the time the hole was deep enough for eternity. For anyone else he would’ve offered a comforting hand on the shoulder and a few tender words, but it would only have been brusquely shrugged off and met with terse denial. So instead he had said  _ thanks for the help _ and tried to imbue those simple words with the concern and consolation his friend wouldn’t otherwise accept. He wasn’t sure if it had worked. 

This time, he’d seen Bill’s face fall as soon as they had reached the landing and made out what it was they were looking at. The man had ducked his head low, hiding his eyes under the brim of his hat as they’d watched the morning make its arrival known. Not even Bill Williamson could be angry at such a sight, but melancholy seemed a perfect fit. For these past few minutes, Javier had heard the occasional muffled sniffle, and ignored it, but he knew as soon as he looked up that Bill would be wiping his eyes and avoiding his gaze, holding his body close, clenching his fists to keep them from shaking. 

“Can you carry him down to the horses?” asked Javier, pointedly watching the shallow movement of Arthur’s chest. He heard a shuddering breath behind him, and then a few more, but they grew quieter each time. A month or two ago, it would’ve been a big ask for one man, even one as large as Bill, to carry him. Now, his clothes hung off his body like he was a child wearing ill-fitting hand-me-downs.

“I can do that,” came the soft reply. Javier reluctantly lifted his hand off of Arthur’s, and directed Bill on picking him up. By the time he was cradled in Bill’s flannel-clad arms, seemingly the kindest position for his fragile condition, he looked no more aware of what was happening. Javier took the lead heading down the little mountain, never straying too far ahead lest Bill needed support. With every step, he worried that the faint, labored breathing might cease, but he didn’t turn around, and it didn’t stop. Soon enough, but still much, much longer than it had taken them to go up, they were back at the bottom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was hard.


	5. Chapter 5

The day was now warmer upon them in those patches of sunlight between the shadows of the tall trees, and the two stallions stood in one such patch. They were tethered to their trees at favorable angles and seemed more content for their period of rest. Brown Jack nickered a greeting upon seeing his owner, and Bill’s heart fluttered to see Morgan turn his head ever so slightly toward the sound. 

It was distressing to see the man like this. He had shed a few tears, after first seeing him and thinking him dead, but seeing him half-alive was terrible in its own ways, not least of which was the overwhelming knowledge that there was nothing he could possibly do to stop the decline. Bill didn’t know much about illness or medicine or anything of the sort, but he had seen a lot of death in his days, and a lot of dying men. He could feel Morgan’s bones so clearly, he feared that underneath his loose-fitting clothing the man’s ribs and spine would be sticking out like a flea-bitten and unremembered stray dog. To see the man that he had thought to be unbreakable, a man he had admired and envied in equal parts in a state of such weakness, laid low not by a bullet or a wild animal, but by disease- it was unthinkable. He’d heard the coughing, and he’d heard the venom with which Micah had spat the words _black lung_ , but the gravity of it hadn’t struck him before, because it was Arthur Morgan they were talking about. Arthur Morgan, who could come back from anything no worse for wear. Arthur Morgan made it through botched robberies, and brawls, and bounty hunters, and being captured by O’Driscolls, and being washed up after shipwrecks. He might be stuck in bed for a week, sure, with every woman in camp fawning over him and some of the men too, but it always seemed to Bill that he was the luckiest bastard around. Until now. 

“I think he moved,” Bill announced to Javier when Brown Jack nickered again, and Morgan moved his head again. He felt another stuttering breath that reverberated in his arms, “Think he needs a drink? I got my canteen over there,”

“Probably can’t hurt,” said Javier, assessingly, and he grabbed the discolored, dinged up canteen off of Brown Jack’s saddle, sparing a moment to pat that soft brown cheek when the stallion turned to him with his inquisitive gaze. When he went over to Bill, he was surprised to see that Arthur really did look more responsive. He was watching Javier approach with those sad, reddened eyes set against the aggravated bruises of his face, but they seemed a bit more present than they did while he was collapsed upon the mountainside. Maybe it was the activity or the newfound warmth, but whatever it was, it seemed his tenuous hold on life had gotten incrementally stronger. Not strong enough to hope, not really, but strong enough that he might live long enough to die somewhere more comfortable.

“Should I try to stand him up?” asked Bill, unsure of how exactly they would proceed with his suggestion.

“No, try sitting him up against something. It’d be good to rest, and we need to figure out where we’re headed before we try to put him on a horse,” 

Just as he was mindful of positioning Brown Jack away from the two dead horses, so too did he carefully choose a thicker-trunked tree with a patch of sunlight to lean Morgan against. No one wants to look at that, even if the man could hardly look at anything. Gently, he stooped low to set Arthur down on the grass. He was aware of Javier watching, antsy and ready to chide him if he got too clumsy or too rough, though this time it was unwarranted. He eased Arthur’s head back against the trunk, feeling unwashed, overgrown hair between his fingers, and it struck him that he and Arthur had been in more physical contact this one morning than the entire time they had known each other. Surely carrying a man down a mountain in his arms was more than seven years of awkward pats on the back, accidental brushings of hands or knockings of shoulders, a handful of drunken punches thrown, and one memorable getaway upon the same horse. As he contemplated that thought and wondered if it was sad, he saw Arthur close his eyes for a couple seconds, and open them again, and he could’ve sworn the other man was about to speak, but he didn’t.

“Think you can drink?” asked Javier, after Bill had stood back up and he had taken his place crouched on the ground next to the sick man. 

Morgan didn’t respond, but he must’ve not responded in a way that said yes, because Javier proceeded to very carefully pour a bit of water into the mouth that was lulled partially open. Some of it went in, and he didn’t choke, which meant it was partially successful, but most of it just ran down his chin, through his unkempt stubble, down his neck, and directly into his shirt. The top two buttons of it were undone, it was that old blue one he wore too often.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” said Javier, but he poured a bit more. If he was trying to be more precise, it wasn’t obvious. However, it seemed that this failure was successful in its own right, how typical, because Arthur became more aware than he had been at any point that morning; he was blinking rapidly and holding his head up, and though his arms were still slumped at his side, they seemed slumped with greater intent. Once again, from where Bill was watching a couple of feet away, it looked like he was about to talk; it was the way he was holding his mouth, looking like he’d been trying to interject in a conversation but the topic had changed too quickly, like he was on the verge of voicing an opinion that wouldn’t be well received. It was almost absurd to him, waiting for a man to speak with the same anticipation and shock that he would have if it seemed like a dog was about to start talking. Or a corpse. 

Javier fixed him with a wide-eyed look that told him he wasn’t crazy for thinking that he saw what he thought he saw. The two were on edge now, and how quickly could overwhelming despair turn into fleeting optimism at any sign that for however bad things might be, they might get some speck of unexpected and unearned relief. It was a pea-sized amount of hope in their well-tended garden of worse-things-to-come, but still they yearned for it. Morgan opened his mouth, and nothing came out. He opened it again, and a harsh, high pitched wheeze escaped. He took a few more seconds, a few more breaths. He turned his head slowly, fixing his tired gaze first on Bill, who was stood to his left, then on Javier, who was crouched at eye-level to his right. He closed his eyes once more, and leaned his head back against the tree, and with great effort, he spoke in a quiet, broken voice.

“Dutch sent you boys back for me?”

Those dark eyes were filled with so much pity that Bill, not even the target of his gaze, could nevertheless feel himself shrinking and melting under it. There was a lot that Javier could do with a look, but this wasn't one that Bill had ever seen before. It was one he didn't want to see again. 

“No, we haven’t seen him since we left Beaver Hollow,” replied Javier, his voice soft but matter-of-fact. Morgan clenched his eyes shut tighter. 

“Oh. I didn’t think-” he started and interrupted himself with a cough, “I didn’t think- think that- think that anyone-”

He broke into a coughing fit, and hunched over with the violent motion, his stringy hair hanging in front of face. Bill felt his heart leap with panic, worried that Morgan might only stop when he looked as dead as he had on that mountain, but the coughs eventually morphed back into those harsh wheezes. Javier had reflexively shuffled back and then half stood, but as it receded he cautiously lowered himself once more, holding out the canteen as he waited for Morgan to notice it. Morgan moved a hand to rub at his face, still bent over, and gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders. Silence pervaded for a few moments, one man incapable of speaking and the other two not knowing what to say. Bill looked around, looked upward, readjusted his hat, and tried not to look too closely at Morgan. He seemed so vulnerable, so small, and seeing him in his sickness was almost unbearably intimate to Bill now that he knew that the other man knew he was there to witness it. He never hung around much when the other boys in the gang were injured- he’d spoken to John only once when he’d been laid up by wolves, same with Arthur after he’d been captured by the O’Driscolls. It made him uncomfortable, seeing them like that, and he never knew what to say or do, and besides, it wasn’t like anyone was ever dying to speak to him anyway. 

Decisively, Javier set the canteen down next to Morgan, and stood up. He walked the few yards over to Boaz and checked over the horse’s tack, then started rustling through his saddlebags. 

“We need to find some place to go, somewhere Arthur can rest. Then we need to go back and bury Grimshaw. Bill, you got any ideas?”

“No, nothing I can think of,” he replied after a second, slightly sheepish to have nothing to offer but thankful to be taken out of his head again. Now that they were headed somewhere, or a least trying to find somewhere to head, he could make himself busy instead of just standing around. He supposed he could’ve made himself busy earlier, but he hadn’t thought of it then. 

“I never had much time to scout around here, but we could set up in the woods if it comes down to it. We got Murfree Brood to worry about in these parts, though, so maybe we head into Ambarino or to Cumberland Forest? Suppose that’s a bit too close to Fort Wallace, and after yesterday with the train, patrols will be everywhere,” Javier took what he was looking for out of the bag, fed the two oatcakes he’d uncovered to Boaz, and started brushing down the little paint. 

Bill watched him, and thought to do the same while he tried to think of any little shack or well-hidden clearings he’d wandered across recently. Trouble was, he’d been on guard duty almost constantly back at Beaver Hollow, same as Javier. They’d lost so many guns recently, and even with Mrs.Adler added into the rotation, being stuck in a shithole and surrounded by enemies meant that there wasn’t time for much else. He racked his mind as he brushed a day and a night’s worth of dust out of Brown Jack’s coat, but didn’t find anything worth mentioning. 

Then, he heard the wet sound of a throat being cleared behind him. It seemed that Morgan had finally noticed the canteen, and that he had had much more success with it than Javier.

“That lake to the west of here, O’Creagh’s Run? The cabin on it’s empty, we can go there,” said Morgan, sounding louder and marginally clearer but no less tired or miserable than he had before. Javier paused his work to look at him. 

“You sure? I thought I saw someone there not too long ago,” 

“I’m sure, a friend of mine lived there but he died,” Arthur laid a hand on his chest and breathed out a deep sigh at the effort. 

It seemed that the matter was decided, seeing as it was a decision between that or nothing. They finished up with the horses, and Morgan professed himself capable of sitting upright, so they boosted him up to sit behind Brown Jack’s saddle. It took a while, and he’d had another coughing fit, but they got him up. Javier took the lead, but it was a road that they’d all been on before. They’d come this way, Dutch at the head and setting a furious pace, riding out to the battle at Cornwall Kerosene and Tar. It hadn’t been long ago, but it felt like it had. 

On that short ride over to the lake, Bill could feel Arthur leaning into him, slumped onto him. The arms around his waist weren’t at all tight, but the pressure of the man’s forehead against his shoulder and the ragged breaths that sounded so sharply in his ears put him on edge. It had him clenching his fists and biting down on his lips, which only served to make him even angrier at his own ridiculousness. He had plenty of reasons to be uncomfortable- he was tired and hungry, and he could use a drink, but it was the dying man behind him that was getting to him in such a way. He shamefully told himself not to be irritated at his friend who he had abandoned, at his brother who had almost died alone, it wasn’t his fault, but the end of the ride couldn’t come soon enough.


	6. Chapter 6

The sun was high in the sky by the time the lake was in sight, but even so, Javier found himself wishing that he had packed something a bit warmer in his saddlebags. The wind had picked up as they traveled the short distance, and it was howling by the time the little cabin came into view. He had come this way a few weeks past, running some errand for Dutch, and at the time there had been smoke rising from the chimney as the sun went down over the lake. It had been a pretty picture, so solitary, nestled in these mountains, the little copses of pines, the wildflowers in every hue you could imagine. He’d even marked it down on his map, thinking that if the camp could ever spare him for a day, he would ride out in the morning and see if there was anything tasty in the crystalline water. For as much as he disliked those months spent in the south, the fishing had been wonderful, and he’d wondered, as he had passed through before and took the luxury of lingering for a short while, if anything here could match up to the steelhead trout he’d caught in abundance in the Lannahechee. Maybe now he’d have his chance to see; it still looked just as lovely as it had the first time, now with sun flaring out across the still water.

But that would be for later, because at the moment his only concern, or at least most pressing and actionable concern, was getting himself and Arthur out of the stinging cold wind. The half of his face that was taking it head-on felt raw, but Arthur might be faring a bit better with the way he was leaning into Bill’s back. Cold wasn’t good for a sick man, though, and they needed to get him inside and in bed, and then get him fed. 

The road came up to the back of the house, the front porch taking advantage of the picturesque view. There was a fenced-in area at the back, although in its current state of disrepair it might not keep much inside. Within it was a roofed stall, complete with a bed of damp, rotting straw, and a table composed of two crates pushed against the back of the house and covered with scraps of lumber and woodworking tools. There was a shed to the right of that, shorter than the house it was attached to, and the same muted brown as the rest of the structure. 

Javier slowed Boaz as they approached, and hitched him to one of the sturdier-looking fence posts. Brushing his hair out of his face for the twentieth time that morning, he walked over to the door at the side of the house. Despite his being harassed by the wind, he still went up the three steps to the door cautiously and turned the knob slowly. It offered no resistance. He peaked in the door and was hit by the musty, stale smell of abandonment. Arthur was right. He wondered what friend of his had chosen to live out here, so far away from anyone else. He stepped inside, listening distantly to Bill talking to Arthur and feeling confident that they could manage to get Arthur off Brown Jack without his help. Bill had been careful with him thus far, and it’d probably be much easier than getting him on was. His eyes adjusted to the dimness quickly, and the solid walls around him were an immediate relief. 

There were three small windows on the house and though they brought some sunlight inside, it was only in narrow streams. He hadn’t expected the place to be as thoroughly furnished as it was; it was far from the generally sparse cabins and various other structures left in the wilderness that he or the other boys had wandered across and spent a night in over the years. On the back wall, nearest where he entered, was the fireplace, with a few pans hanging off the mantle and plenty of other things atop it: a copper kettle, a clock, a candle, a small bag of oats, and a big tin of biscuits. Above that hung an impressive northern pike, and all over the wall were his similarly stuffed friends: an oversized bass, a longnose gar far from his home, a rust-colored coyote, a dark-furred and scar-faced wolf, and a twelve-point buck whose antlers brushed the ceiling. 

To the right of the fireplace was a bed, tucked into the corner and sectioned off with a colorfully quilted curtain, and Javier felt some relief at the sight. To the left of it was a small shaving table with a brassy, shattered mirror. He didn’t linger on the dull reflection that he saw. 

A few feet from the foot of the bed was a roughly constructed wall spanning half the room that divided the space, and as Javier ducked around to check out the other side of the house, Bill came through the door with his arm around Arthur’s waist, and Arthur’s arm around his shoulder. The two went straight for the bed, Bill pushing aside the curtain and Arthur hastily untangling himself and then sitting, maybe collapsing, upon it. Arthur’s gasping breaths filled the little house as Javier finished looking everything over and Bill started rummaging through every one of the cabinets and cupboards. 

“There’s beets,” said Bill, holding up a green and white can with, yes, some bright burgundy beets proudly emblazoned on the label, and then another can that was a comparatively unremarkable red and white, “And oxtail soup. Might be some other things around here, but I’m starving, you want some?”

“I guess. I was gonna get some firewood, if you want to have it hot,” For however great an improvement it was from the wind outside, there was still a chill to the cabin, and added onto that was the even more chilling thought of choking down cold, gelatinous tinned food. 

“I don’t wanna wait that long, but the fire’d be nice,” Bill turned back to the tall shelf beside the sink that he’d grabbed the cans from, “There’s some peaches too, and salmon. Hey, Morgan, you like beets?”

Javier didn’t wait to hear the reply as he stepped out the front door and onto the porch. There were two chairs sat on it; one was the twin to the chair at the small table inside, and the other, wider and lower to the ground, was made out of branches that had been bound together, some still tinged green with lichen. He went down a couple of stairs off the porch, opposite the side of the house they had entered from. 

As he had predicted, or hoped, there was a nice stock of chopped logs stored in a large rack against the house. There was also another enclosed stall on the backside of the first one, and an outhouse a few yards away. He gathered an armful of firewood, bracing against the wind when he stepped back onto the porch. He pushed the half-closed door open with his shoulder, and in the short time it had taken him, Bill had already moved on to opening a second can of soup, sitting at the table under the window. 

The first had been handed off to Arthur, who ate sitting on the side of the bed, looking as morose as any man had ever managed while shoveling soup into his mouth. He looked like he might fall asleep at any second, his grip on the can loose, although the motion of his arm was persistent. While Javier arranged the wood in the fireplace and dug around his pockets for his matchbook, Bill proceeded on to opening the beets. By the time he got the fire going strong enough to sustain itself without much further prodding, Javier turned around to witness Bill stabbing the sliced beets with his knife, transferring them to his can of thick, meaty soup, and stirring vigorously. 

“I know we didn’t see any Pinkertons, but one of us should still stay on guard, right? Or at least stay awake?” asked Javier, knowing he must be exhausted, physically or otherwise, because he couldn’t even find the energy to mock the other man’s eating habits. He went to check out the tinned food selection for himself and found it no more promising than what Bill had described. Bill had the courtesy to finish his viscous gulp straight from the can before answering, but not the courtesy to finish chewing it.

“It’d be safer. If you wanna sleep first, I can wake you up when it gets dark,”

“Sounds good to me,” Javier settled for the last can of oxtail soup, and wondered what they could even do if the Pinkertons did show up. Throw Arthur on a horse and ride away? Try to take them on even though now, in this relative safety, keeping his eyes open was a conscious effort? Would they even hear anyone approaching from inside the cabin? He tried not to worry about it, to worry instead about the things he could handle.

He peeled the label off the can as he walked back to the fireplace and sat down on the floor in front of it. He’d always liked to feel the heat on his skin, when it was cold and when it wasn’t. Even in Lemoyne, he chose to sleep by the fire. That had been his spot for years.

Taking out his knife from its sheath on his gun belt, he pierced the top of the can and worked it around in a circle, and pried the lid of the can off. Wiping the tip of his knife off on the rim of the can, he put it back in its place, and set the can on the stone lip of the fireplace, a few inches from the flames, and tried not to pay attention to the overly salty smell. Regrettably, he didn’t have many provisions on his horse at the moment, not as many as he usually would. He had a tin or two of crackers, maybe some salted meat, nothing too substantial. Things had been tight at camp, with very little allotted for packing away in case of emergency. The stew pot had been kept mostly full, game had still been brought in, but a supply run through Murfree territory was deemed too risky an endeavor. Grimshaw and Pearson had been brushed aside every time either one voiced their concerns, but so long as no one was actually starving, it wasn’t a priority to Dutch. 

Javier rotated the can, and then he leaned back on his arms and listened to the crackling of the fire and the rhythmic sound of Arthur’s breathing. It still had a bit of that high-pitched wheezing to it, but as he looked over at the man, he was glad to see that he was sleeping, a blanket pulled up over him, though he was still fully dressed. He heard Bill noisily exit through the front door, though it sounded more muffled than it should have. Javier yawned, and stared into the fire, and tried to keep himself from falling asleep, and thought, despite himself: where was this going?

There was so much of the past weeks, the past years maybe, that he had yet to make sense of, but even his focus on planning the next step ahead would soon falter. They would bury Grimshaw tomorrow, and then what? He would stay in this cabin and watch Arthur die? The way he looked, the way he sounded, the state they found him in; it was inevitable. He would try his best, of course, to keep him comfortable and stable, but even he couldn’t fool himself into thinking otherwise. And where would he go after that? It would all be over soon, this last of his familial obligations fulfilled. It would be over for good, every one of Dutch’s Boys dead in the ground or scattered to the wind. He hadn’t yet asked Arthur what had become of John, or where Charles went after that mess at the oil fields, not that either one would want anything to do with him. Tilly and Mary-Beth and Karen, they’d probably feel the same. He could’ve cried right then, finally, after the longest day of his life, but he didn’t, because the door opened and a gust of wind hit him, shocking and frigid on his face. 

“I figured you’d want this,” said Bill, tossing both of their bedrolls inside, stood outside the open door, “Bet that soup’s hot by now,”

Bill shut the door, and Javier touched the metal can. It was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who googled "canned soup history" and spent an hour on that lol


	7. Chapter 7

If there was one skill he had that none of the boys in the gang had ever doubted, it was this: Bill Williamson was an excellent gravedigger. They’d question his horsemanship, his marksmanship, his hunting, his planning, his robbing, his brawling, his literacy- but even Hosea had said that you could always count on him to dig a big hole. True, it had been one of those times where Bill had thanked him for his kind words and later realized the man had been making fun of him, but the point still stood. Maybe he couldn’t manage to find any game up in Colter, but he’d dug up the frozen ground faster than even Morgan had.

He’d helped bury Davey and Jenny up there, and then Hosea had sent him and Lenny up to bury Mrs.Adler’s husband, and he’d done that too. It took a whole day, sunup to sundown, with how cold the ground was, but he’d done it. Done it, and done it well. He wouldn’t ever skimp on the depth, wouldn’t be delivering any ambitious animal his meal. He’d never dug for a casket or coffin, you didn’t get such things the way they lived, but it’d still be large enough that they would have enough space to lie flat on their backs. 

He wouldn’t ever say it, but he enjoyed it, the act of it. The repetition, the strain, the way he’d have all those hours to himself because even if he had help there wasn’t ever much talking. He liked that there was no ambiguity as to what was expected of him, he liked that he wouldn’t ever fuck it up. He liked that it meant something. He’d never speak up, not ever, if the gang had gathered round to say a few words for the departed, but his labor would be his send-off. It was a way to say _you were important_ , and he wasn’t a sentimental person, except for when he was, and that was why he always volunteered for the job. 

After Colter, there’d been Sean at Clemens Point, and how awful had all of that been. He’d been shaking with rage and residual fear for hours, but digging that grave with Javier at the lakeside took some of the tension out of him. His shoulder had burned the entire time, but he worked through it, had to work through it. The kid had been shot right before his eyes, and he’d seen a lot of people shot before, seen a lot worse than that, but it had been his planning that put the four of them on that street in that town at that time, and he couldn’t let that sight go. Even after Morgan explained to him again about the Grays’ tobacco fields, about how they knew to look for the redhead, he’d still played it back in his mind, still felt that spray of blood, still heard that voice that had been cut off too soon. 

Poor Kieran Duffy back at Shady Belle, that was hard to see, and the whole camp had been anxious for weeks after it, knowing that the O’Driscolls had found them. The grave had been one of the quicker ones though, the soil was soft and damp. But with that damp soil came a humid day, and he had been drenched in sweat and panting after those hours in that empty field with the sun beating down upon him. It seemed fitting considering all the hell he’d put that boy through. Not as much as the O’Driscolls had, he supposed, but more than he deserved. A lot more than he deserved. Charles Smith had helped him that time, and if it was your preference not to say a word the entire time, there was no better man to dig a grave with. 

Hosea and Lenny, though, he wasn’t there for them. No fault of his own, he told himself, nothing he could do from Guarma, and during that time on Guarma, he’d thought they might’ve been buried in the city, or burned, or whatever it was they did with criminals. Knowing the gang had buried them, that had been a relief to hear, it was more than Mac got, but he never saw their graves, out somewhere in Bluewater Marsh. The oldest and the youngest of their boys, taken out so quickly, so carelessly, though wasn’t that always how it happened? It had hardly seemed real, Hosea collapsing on that street, and for a second he had half-expected the old man to charm the bullet out of his back, to pull the same tricks he always had. But he hadn’t, and the world had fallen down around them, and only a few minutes later John Marston was in cuffs and Lenny Summers was dead, and only a few minutes after that he and the others were hunkered down in a musty old attic, and they heard their hunters prowling the streets below for all those tense hours, and then, incredibly, it had gotten worse. It could always get worse. 

He had ridden back to Beaver Hollow in the fog of the morning, sent back by Javier so that the other man could watch over Morgan, who hadn’t said a word, had barely been awake, since they reached the cabin. Whatever strength he had mustered for the ride there seemed to have taken everything out of him, every single bit of himself that he had left. After waking Javier up at twilight, Bill had eaten his scant dinner and watched from across the room as Javier gently washed the blood off Morgan’s face with a damp rag. He hadn’t made a voluntary sound the entire time, couldn’t even hold himself up when Javier tried to take his jacket off. 

Bill had a fitful night of sleep- he was so exhausted that it came to him quickly, and he was grateful for that rarity, but he couldn’t go long without waking up again. He’d startle awake noiselessly; realizing that he could hear the fire or the wind whistling or those small, choked-off noises that Morgan made in his sleep. By the sixth time, he was cursing Morgan’s friend for not keeping a single drop of alcohol in his house, and cursing Pearson for running off with the meager remains of the camp supply, and cursing himself for being the person that he was. By the seventh time, he awoke instead to soft, rhythmic scraping and rasping. He had wearily opened his eyes, knowing it would only make it harder to fall asleep again, and Javier was there next to him, sat on the floor, his own heavy bedroll pushed aside, diligently carving something into a plank on his lap. The orange light of the fire cast a honeyed sheen over everything in the tiny cabin, everything it could reach, glowing gold around those strands of hair that fell in his face, the brown skin of his bared forearms, the gleaming metal of the knife he held, every groove and every knot in the wood. 

When Bill woke for the last time, as a blue dawn peaked in through the windows, Javier had given him a cup of coffee, and a mission to find more provisions at Beaver Hollow, and a wooden cross that read ‘ _RIP SUSAN GRIMSHAW,’_ and that was one mystery solved. Now, the pleasant smell of overturned earth had overtaken any lingering scent of death, up here in this spot he’d chosen, not too far from Beaver Hollow for practicality’s sake, where he could hear the Kamassa River running, and he was ready to plant that cross in the ground. He held it in his hands, admiring the precise lines of the letters and how perfectly spaced they were, running his fingers along the grain of the wood, lingering in the moment.

He’d wondered on occasion, if he fell, which could happen any day in the life they lived, who would be the one to carve out his name, to select the prettiest board from a pile, to spend hours with the contours of the letters, to endure splinters for his sake. It used to be Hosea’s job, and he had done good work with it, but as the years passed so had the responsibility. Morgan had done a few: Davey Callander and Jenny Kirk; Bill had rarely seen him idle in Colter. Pearson had made time for Kieran Duffy while the camp was being pieced back together. Charles Smith had made the cross for Sean Macguire while the grave was being dug, maybe he’d done it for Hosea and Lenny as well. Bill had never seen Javier’s handiwork before, but it was nice. They were all nice.

There were other things he’d wondered too. Who would choose the site, who would take over as gravedigger, who would lay him in the ground, and would they take one last look at his face before the earth swallowed him? He’d wondered what would’ve happened if he’d taken Davey’s place on the ferry, what would’ve happened if Arthur hadn’t been so quick on the draw in Rhodes, what would’ve happened if he’d gone first across those rooftops in Saint Denis. Wondered if they would be better off. And some nights, bad nights, after he had made himself a nuisance or a joke or a burden or a brute or a liability; after he’d convinced himself that they would, he’d wondered if anyone would even have anything nice to say about him. _He was an excellent gravedigger_ , they’d say, _but he’s shirking his duties again._

He settled the cross in its place, planting it deeply, making it secure, and he didn’t speak aloud for Ms.Grimshaw, but he thought about her. He thought about her warmly, more warmly than maybe he would have when she was still alive, about how she’d taken care of the lot of them. He thought about the look of disgust on her face when Dutch had taken him to their little camp for the first time, and he found it funnier now than he had then, because he _had_ deserved it. He remembered her singing, remembered her sneaking bites of tough stew meat to Copper, remembered how she would shout at him to keep still while she stitched him up, remembered her dragging him into town so he could buy something she deemed ‘presentable’, remembered how she wouldn’t suffer fools or traitors, of which he was often the former and had a great deal of respect for her way with the latter.

He had that rattling in his chest again, and it grew more forceful, grew heavier, as he walked away. The gang had made their memorials, had spread them across this country, but they didn’t ever come back to them. How long would a wooden cross stand, anyway, and for how long would it be legible? It would decay, just as she would, just as they all would. He looked back at it, an overcast day graying everything, wondering if his eyes would be the last ones to see it, the last ones to read her name. 

He had to get back. It wouldn’t be fair to Javier to be kept awake for so long. He needed to find anything of value left at Beaver Hollow, needed to find food, because their names and faces might still be all over Valentine or Annesburg or Van Horn. He looked at that cross, and swore to himself, as he always did, that he would remember forever the place where it stood. He wondered if anyone out there would ever do the same for him.


	8. Chapter 8

It was another cold morning, two whole days after they’d found Arthur on that mountain, and for the first time in many weeks, Javier went through that familiar set of motions and broke the stillness of the lake with his cast landing deep into the water. Arthur’s friend had been a fisherman, a very adept one if his trophies were anything to judge by, and in the wicker tackle box left beside his rod, Javier had discovered a tantalizing array of different lures. They were all handmade, carved out of wood, and painted or adorned with feathers, some more pretty than practical. There were abstract colorful insects, a school of minnows in various sizes, and a tiny green frog whose painted-on eyes looked at the world with apprehension and wonder. He’d chosen one of the insects for his first cast today, and he supposed it was a dragonfly with feathered wings of red; maybe one of the cardinals that flitted about in the pine trees would be helping him catch his dinner. 

He stood there on the pebbled shoreline, the cabin behind him, waiting for a bite and prepared to wait a good while longer, still feeling the warmth from his coffee as it settled in his stomach, and grew grateful once again for the beauty of this place. Maybe it was inconsiderate of him; disrespectful to find such simple consolation, even briefly, in the face of all that had transpired. But the world was beautiful, he had to remind himself, even as it was unkind, and acknowledging one didn’t mean ignoring the other. 

That was still who he was, someone who could appreciate the grace of his surroundings, who could find pleasure in artistry and fine details, in things that were overly intricate or perfectly neat or that contrasted handsomely or that others might overlook. That had been true a decade ago, and it was true now. Dutch would’ve called it a virtue, and mostly Javier would agree. There were certainly times where it felt like something high-minded to cling to, to clear his mind, to keep him afloat, to keep him from succumbing to the brutal life he had lived. That was one thing that had set the gang apart: there was the moral code that Dutch claimed, but maybe their relative orderliness was a truer contrast. It wasn’t that all of them were particularly well-groomed or well-dressed or that the camp was immaculate, but compared to the O’Driscolls or Lemoyne Raiders or Micah’s sleazy friends, even the grimiest of their ranks were almost dapper; they could pass for honest men and women in the western towns they frequented, for a time at least, if you didn’t look too closely. They were the most civilized outlaws around, another shared principle that Javier had found with them. 

At other times, it seemed more like a superficial distraction, ineffectual, born of vanity. It felt like he was playing at something. When Trelawny was around with his fine clothing and refined manners, or when he had gone on jobs that had him around proper high-society folk, it became obvious that the style and the upkeep and the careful eye he prided himself on would mean nothing to them. How many bloodstains had they scrubbed from their white shirts, and how many bullet holes were in their hats, and why was he imitating people he despised? Even in his finest suit, he would mean nothing to them. The Lannahechee riverboat had made that clear enough if it wasn’t already, and it was moments like that when he had better understood the side-eye he got from some of the boys in camp when he spent an hour polishing his boots. There were standards he could never live up to.

There was hardly a thing in this world that could keep him from keeping himself tidy, any one of the gang would’ve told you that, would’ve laughed about it, and he’d had a try at that shaving table with the broken mirror yesterday, when Bill had been gone and when Arthur was asleep, though wakefulness was increasingly the exception. But those dozen shattered reflections had been almost unbearable. He’d catch sight of himself sometimes, not often but still too often in these past few months, and he’d see someone who was growing old, whose face was lined and whose eyes were sunken in. It was a certain way the light would play him, that would make his prettiest scars seem ugly, and his ugliest scars disfiguring. His skin would lose its warmth, and his eyes their glow, and he would watch himself grow colder, transfixed and horrified. It was unbearable, but he couldn’t look away, what a lovely Narcissus he would make. Before, when it happened, he would eventually give up and come back to the task later, and he’d find the person he remembered being, but when he’d caught himself in that brassy mirror not an hour ago, it was that same cruel image reflecting back at him. The light in the cabin didn’t flatter him, he told himself, and though it bothered him to be so unkempt, he would manage, had managed before. It wasn’t like Bill would have any room to judge, or Arthur, so here he was.

Now, the sun rose up behind him. It eased onto the water, the mountains, that tiny island with the big tree, and it lit the clouds of his breath up, and he breathed even deeper just to watch them as they disappeared. He kept the lure moving, watched the gentle ripples on the lake’s surface, their unceasing symmetry, and others appeared on the surface, smaller ones, edging ever closer to where he wished them to bite. It wasn’t frivolous, he reminded himself, they would make good use of anything he caught, and this feeling like leisure didn’t mean it didn’t have to be done.

When Bill had ridden back the previous afternoon, Brown Jack was more laden than he had ever seen the horse. Every bit of food from Beaver Hollow was there, which was less than he had hoped but about what he expected. There were some more canned vegetables, a few more tins of crackers and a half-sack of flour, a couple of weary carrots that were fit for the horses and not much else. That and what was left in the cabin wouldn’t last long between all of them. He’d also brought clothing for the three of them, not quite everything they had, but things that were necessary, things that he had missed. Javier had put his poncho in its place around his shoulders before stepping out the door, and the autumnal chill was much more bearable than it had been the previous days. What had surprised him, however, were the handful of photographs collected from Arthur’s trunk, and the matte black wooden guitar case, tied down sloppily but solidly alongside the pile of goods on Brown Jack’s rump. 

He hadn’t played much in these past weeks either, and surely that motion would come to him even more naturally than this one; he jerked the rod upward to set the hook on the bite that had finally come. Gloved hands reeled the line in steadily, pausing when the fish fought back to match its every tug. It felt strong and spirited, like it would feed them well. Ten minutes later and his arms were minorly exhausted, but his prize was a glistening sockeye salmon. Its big, claw-shaped mouth was filled with sharp little teeth and its yellow eyes with animosity as it flopped desperately upon the shore it had been dragged on to. It was a beautiful fish, nearly two feet long and so shockingly vibrant even as it muddied itself on the rocky earth, the green and the red still regal. It was also terribly ugly, primitive and predatory and misshapen, like a creature that God had cursed and then forgotten, and it kept fighting for relief that would never come until eventually, it stilled. 

Javier felt himself smile as he admired his catch, the feeling almost unfamiliar as he unhooked the lure, and as he held the fish up and felt its heft. This was one he would’ve playfully bragged about to Tilly and Mary-Beth, one that would’ve had Pearson grinning, one that Hosea would’ve looked at and offered both a hearty congratulations for his protege, as well as a story about some time in Oregon when he’d caught one nearly twice as big. He might’ve even asked when the two of them would head out together again. Aurora Basin, that must’ve been the last time, a few weeks before the ferry, and they’d ridden up through Tall Trees and spent the whole weekend there. It was a lot like this place, surrounded by mountains and forest, but the water had been even clearer. They had a lot of good catches there, a lot of good conversations too. The first time was at a far-flung and nameless lake one summer morning in Wyoming, back when he could mostly understand the others speaking but hesitated to form a sentence for himself, and Hosea had walked him through his first cast patiently, teaching him the words for every bit of equipment, for every plant they passed, for every creature they saw approaching the water and every one they pulled out of it. 

Bittersweet, that was the word for this, that was what his smile grew into, how many times had he smiled since the bank job? Such a bitter world, but here was its sweetness; every beautiful thing there is to see reminding him of those beautiful things that he’ll never see again. There were things he hadn’t even thought of yet that he would miss, he’d happened across so many memories in these two days, so much time he’d spent alone, so much time to think, so many painful reflections. He put the fish in a bucket that scarcely fit it, then he retrieved the ornate dragonfly and thanked whatever little bird had given those feathers and whatever careful hands had carved its body. He readied himself to cast out again. 

Later that day, late into the evening, the salmon had been expertly filleted and less expertly cooked up in a heavy iron pan over the fire. He wasn’t a great cook, but it was a great fish. Even the burned bits had been good, Bill had agreed with him on that. Javier had taken one of the chairs from the porch inside, and they had both eaten at the little table under the window, and it felt oddly familiar in the way that very few things had. They talked for a bit, more than they had in a long while, about the food, the weather, the horses, normal things, and then about Arthur. Arthur, who was silent except for the coughing fits that woke him up, whose eyes had gone back to haziness whenever he had them open, who had been fed broth and wet, mushy peas as he couldn’t sit upright to chew a meal. They shared their observations, which were mostly the same, and they shared the awkwardness that came with wishing for someone’s recovery while knowing how impossible that was.

Then Bill had stepped out for a cigarette, and Javier had put their plates and forks in the sink, and then he looked at his guitar case for about as long as he had looked at his fishing rod that morning. It was leaning against the wall that divided the cabin, besides two old pairs of boots and below two old jackets on the coat rack. He decided to kneel down to reach it, to find that latch on the neck, those two more on the body, to open it up. It was just as he had left it, despite his fears; it was as perfect as it had ever been. Maybe a bit dustier. He took it outside.

Out on the porch, the sun was creeping below the mountains, and it had grown cloudier again, and Bill was sitting in that uncomfortable-looking chair made of branches, and Javier sat down near the edge of the porch, legs crossed. He wasn’t wearing his gloves like he had that morning and his hands were cold as soon as he stepped out the door, but he put them in their places, the guitar settled in his lap. Soundlessly, his fingers traveled across the fretboard, savoring the feeling that he had almost abandoned. He set to tuning it, starting at the top string, adjusting carefully, and he was slightly ashamed to hear how off it had gotten, how the discordant notes rang out so harshly through the dusky air, but they eased into correctness, and he strummed across all six of them and it felt like something loosed within him was settled back in place. 

He heard Bill strike a match and light another cigarette as he played a little improvised tune, and then a song his uncle had taught him when his hands had barely been big enough to reach across the strings, and then a song that Uncle had taught him that was awfully gorgeous without the raunchy chorus. He looked out across the water as twilight descended, deepening its blue, obscuring the woods beyond, and he played a song he’d first heard as a lovesick young man, and when he sang, he heard the timidity he thought he’d long grown out of, but he didn’t stop even as his voice trembled. When the last note had faded, he was thinking about what he ought to play next, thinking about how newly sore his fingertips would be, thinking about all those nights he’d spent like this and all those people he had played for, and he was interrupted from his thinking by a voice from behind because he had scarcely remembered that the other man was still out there with him. 

“That’s a sad one, right?” Bill asked, his voice low.

“It is,” Javier answered blandly, nodding, thoughtlessly picking a few notes, and of course he wouldn’t know what it was about, he didn’t understand a word of Spanish. 

“Well, it's nice. Nice- nice to hear, I mean. Pretty, I guess,” and it sounded like he had spoken without his own permission, each word slipping out of his grasp and into the air, more sincere than he had intended. 

Javier looked over his shoulder at Bill, who was tugging at the folded cuffs of his leather coat. “I never knew you cared to listen,”

“Everyone does,” he said, intent on looking at his sleeves but a scowl still clear in his brow, and as his words hung for a few minutes in the quiet of the night, Javier realized just how icy his hands were, and just how tired he was, so he slowly eased himself up, and took his guitar back inside. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this one is a bit scattered, but here it is.


	9. Chapter 9

A week and a half went by before he knew it. After those first few uncertain days, he and Javier had decided that someone staying awake all night was probably unnecessary- all was quiet around the cabin. There might be three or four travelers on the trail around the lake in a day, and though both men would always pause what they were doing when hearing someone go past, and though Bill would feel his heart start to race and the solid weight of the gun at his hip, there was never any trouble. Only once had someone paused at the cabin, when Bill had been idly looking through the rusted tools that lay in disarray at the back of the house, and the man, who had graying hair and a kind face and a handsome buckskin gelding, had called out to him. Bill had walked over slowly, fixing his expression into one that would cow almost anyone, readying himself for confrontation, but the man had only asked him if he knew how long it would take to get to Annesburg from here. 

It was peaceful, almost. Unfamiliar and at times distressing, but peaceful. Even during the best of times with the gang, there was always so much happening. That was how it was with so many people living together, working together, seeking the future together. Here, they lived in solitude and the future was the last thing anyone wanted to think about. There was still work to be done, of course: minding the horses, keeping themselves fed, taking care of Arthur, but there were also a lot of spare hours. A routine had quickly formed. 

They both slept in the back half of the house; Javier had his bedroll laid out lengthwise a foot from the fireplace, and Bill’s was parallel to his, a few inches away. Bill couldn’t ever manage to sleep through the night, and he’d sometimes lie awake for long hours waiting for even that first bit of rest to come. He’d try to keep his eyes closed and his mind empty, listening to the gentle noises of the two other men sleeping or the fire crackling. Morgan’s breathing would catch in his sleep, sounding choked or rough and raspy, and it came to remind Bill of all those months that he’d shared a tent with Hosea, after the old man’s things had been part of what was abandoned fleeing Blackwater. When his frustration grew too great though, he would, despite knowing better, start to look around the cabin from where he lay, and shift positions every few minutes. He would stare up at the taxidermied creatures on the wall, meeting their blank gazes and imagining the hunt that might’ve taken each one down, or he would try to identify each piece from a certain fabric in the quilted curtain that partitioned off the bed, or he would trace figures in the grain of the wood on the ceiling above him, or he would watch as the flickering firelight moved across Javier’s hair, dark as it was and splayed over the back of his neck. Bill was hardly even afraid to be caught staring anymore, as he now knew well enough that the other man always slept on his stomach, his head cradled in his arms and facing the fire, his breathing smooth and steady. 

Though he rarely had any recollection of falling asleep, Bill did eventually wake up in the morning feeling somewhat rested. Until they had run out of coffee several days ago, he would get up before Javier to tend to the fire that had largely died down and to start the percolator going. Now, he was just left with the fire to feed and a breakfast of leftover meat from the night before or a few stale crackers to eat. Then he would get dressed, pulling on boots and a shirt and a coat, securing his gun belt, and head out to the porch as the earliest strands of sunlight started to peek over the horizon, and he would’ve had a cigarette, but they had run out of those as well. When Javier woke up, maybe ten minutes later, maybe an hour later, he would pretty quickly head off to go fishing. No longer did he have his long process of getting ready in the morning, not from what Bill had seen anyway. He threw on his clothes, the same as anyone else, and his stubble was nearly as long as it had been getting back from Guarma. For the first couple of days, he hadn’t strayed too far from the cabin, but now it seemed he was finding a new bit of shoreline to try out every morning. 

Bill would take that as his signal to get to work. All of the remaining canned food was reserved for Arthur, things that he could more easily eat, and in the morning Bill would gingerly shake him awake and tend to whatever needed tending to. It didn’t come easily to him, caring for another person in such a way, but he followed Javier’s example. He helped sit Arthur up when he was too weak to, and he gave him water from the canteen that used to be his but was now only Arthur’s. When Arthur wasn’t capable of feeding himself, Bill’s face would be flushed, but he would do what had to be done, bring the spoon to his mouth, make sure every bite was swallowed. The act, the touching, the closeness was uncomfortable, and he was ashamed of how humiliated he felt doing it. He was ashamed of his own selfish feelings while his friend was suffering. He was ashamed because every violent act he’d ever done in the name of brotherhood had felt more natural than this one. 

Those rare moments when Arthur was more lucid, Bill was thankful, of course, for the sake of his friend, but also a bit dismayed at feeling observed or being acknowledged as he did his duty. However, it was clear then that Arthur found it just as strange as he did: they had been friends for years, but never like this. There was some reassurance to be had in that; he imagined that if their roles were reversed, Arthur’s cheeks would be just as red, his voice just as uncertain. They had looked out for each other, had taken care of each other, but mostly in the form of sharing alcohol or cigarettes or ammunition, or backing up one another in a fistfight, or letting the other in on a lucrative job, or by way of a bullet headed towards a shared enemy. That was what brotherhood had meant for nearly seven years, and now it meant cutting sliced beets up small enough to swallow and helping him use a chamber pot. 

After Arthur went back to sleep, he went out to the horses. They weren’t prone to wandering, well-trained as they were, so they spent all their time untacked and untethered, grazing in the grassy patch of land out beyond the outhouse. Brown Jack always came up to greet him, always gave him that same pleased nicker, and it was always the highlight of his morning. Boaz would be aloof at first, but when he saw Brown Jack getting all the attention, he would also come over to Bill, and nose his way into getting petted as well. 

Both stallions had their winter coats growing in, getting shaggier by the day. It probably wouldn’t be too long before they would start getting snow up here, and Bill hoped that they would be fully grown out by then. Back in May, during that freak blizzard, all the horses had already shed their longer, more insulating coats, leaving them at the mercy of the elements in addition to being often overworked. It was almost miraculous that they didn’t lose any horses to the cold on the way into the mountains, and if there hadn’t been that barn in Colter to cram them all into, certainly they would have lost some then. Bill had figured that Brown Jack would fare better than most of the others, he was an incredibly sturdy beast after all, but still it had been difficult to see him so stressed and fatigued. Even more so because under normal circumstances, Brown Jack loved the cold. Last winter, spent in the foothills of the Northern Grizzlies, he would be the first to roll around in the freshly fallen snow, and he would be entirely unbothered as it clung to his thick layer of fur, and it had been a joy to watch. 

Bill had dutifully combed the mud out of his mane and his feathered fetlocks then, and he also did it now. He brushed the horses every day and picked out tangles in their manes and tails, and he would inspect each hoof, leery of pebbles and mud from the shoreline building up and hurting them, and they both looked a pretty as they ever had thanks to his boredom. He was worried, though, that they wouldn't have enough out here to eat. They had mostly been left to graze at Beaver Hollow as well, not getting the hay and other supplemental foods they were used to, same as the rest of the camp. Neither one looked any skinnier yet, but as soon as the snow did start falling, that might change. Bill could live without coffee and cigarettes and whiskey if he needed to, but Brown Jack looking any worse for wear would push him into risking a trip to town. But that would be further down the line, he would tell himself, so no use in worrying too much when all was fine. 

Bill would be out there with the horses until he decided he felt tired again, and then he would head back to the cabin. It had always seemed silly to him, how he could be awake for hours every night, but fall asleep so easily during the day. Even in the middle of a bustling camp, he could snatch a few hours of sleep in the early afternoon, and he often did. At times, he had theorized that the noise was what helped, it had been too quiet to sleep well in Beaver Hollow, but maybe it wasn’t, because there was no more noise in the cabin during the day than there was when he laid in the same spot to sleep at night, and still his naps were more restful. It left him feeling a bit guilty, that he was here and Javier was out doing something presumably productive, but if he did all that was expected of him, did it really matter how he spent these empty hours? Besides, he would also be here to check in on Morgan. So he would lay down again, and by the time he woke up, Javier would be back with some fish in tow. 

The evening was the time that they would spend together. They would work together cooking their dinner, conversing all the while. Neither of them had much experience, knowing only how to cook something for long enough that it probably won’t kill anyone, but they quickly figured out that it was less likely to burn with two sets of eyes on it. Salmon, perch, bluegill, pickerel, that was what they would have every night, though Javier promised him that one of these days he would bring back a northern pike just as massive as the one above the mantle. They would sit down at the table to eat, and afterward, just as Bill did in the morning, Javier would take care of Arthur. Bill would wash the dishes, and how long had it been since he had that particular chore, and he would listen to the other two as he did.

There was an air of awkwardness to it, but also one of tenderness. Javier had told him that he also found it difficult and strange, but from where Bill stood every night, it sounded almost effortless. Neither of them had much experience in tending to the sick either, but Javier at least knew how to be a comforting presence. He would speak to Arthur with such open kindness and gentle voice, so warm and so caring, and listening to it, Bill would think about how the only one he’d ever spoken to in such a way was his horse, and even then only out of earshot of others. 

It had him thinking back to all the wreckage he had witnessed in his life and how unhelpful he had been to every person he cared for that went through it with him. When Javier had been shot and beaten and incapacitated in Guarma, Bill had guarded him as a battle was waged outside the ship and he had hardly spared the man a terrified glance, hardly said a word to him, had just paced back and forth with a white-knuckle grip on his rifle. He wondered now if Javier had expected something more from him, some reassurance, some compassion, something that anyone who wasn’t so incompetent would know to offer up, something that anyone who wasn’t so ill-equipped could easily give. But even if he hadn’t expected it, he had deserved it, Bill knew that much. 

The dishes would be finished pretty quickly, though, and then he would head out to the porch, feeling the welcome shock of the cool air hitting him. Javier would join him soon enough, his guitar in hand. They would sit out there for a while, watching the sunset, Javier playing music, and Bill listening. Mostly it was just the guitar, which was nice, but every night Bill found himself wishing that Javier would sing again, and treasuring every second that he did. The warmth of his voice, the pure emotion of it, the words he didn’t understand but still felt so deeply; it was a balm to uncertainty and insecurity, and he was grateful, and he was undeserving, and he was ashamed because he had never listened so closely before. Eventually, Javier would complain of the cold and head inside, and they would tend the fire and check on Arthur and undress and lay down in their bedrolls a few inches apart. This was the imprecise peace that they had come to, this was how the days went for a week and a half, all of this over and over again with small variations each day, and different songs each night.

A week and a half, until one rosy evening the music stopped. Javier pointed at a figure in the distance, and surely, thought Bill, things would change.


	10. Chapter 10

“You think he sees us?” Bill asked, but it sounded like he already knew the answer. Javier had recognized Taima from the across the lake, her spotted rump distinct even as the light grew lower, and now Charles Smith was coming around a curve in the road where it clung to the contours of the water, and he didn’t know what was going to happen, but he figured putting his guitar away was a safe start. He got up from his cross-legged position on the porch and leaned it against the wall, beside the chair that Bill was sitting in, and then Bill stood up too. 

Both men watched expectantly, nervously, from the porch as the rider neared. He was moving at an unhurried pace, had been for all that they had seen as he went around the lake, maybe he’d been planning to settle down for the night, maybe Taima had been going for hours. Javier kept giving sidelong glances to his companion, waiting to see if he would take the initiative, or if he would retreat inside, but he just stood there, a faraway look on his face and his fists clenched tight. But when Javier mustered the willpower to head down the steps and onto the earth, Bill followed. When he walked past the house and towards the road, without confidence but nevertheless with resoluteness, Bill followed, hung behind him, clung to him like a shadow. If there had been any question before, certainly Charles Smith could see them now, a few paces in front of them, those last bits of sun still reflecting pink upon the water but under the watch of tall evergreens, the three of them were shaded with only the blueish touch of twilight. 

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what Charles was looking for, why he’d ventured out here, back here, he didn’t know what the other man thought that he was seeing. Was he looking at his enemies: men who’d disparaged him, questioned him, accused him of treachery? A pair of gullible fools who’d been led astray, or a couple of cold-hearted and money-hungry killers, or the thoughtless lackeys of a scheming villain? Was he remembering the other parts, the other side of the past year that they’d shared? Did he think of the trust they once had in each other, those hard-fought battles that had made all of them brothers, or were those last few weeks all that mattered in this moment? No one was reaching for a weapon, not yet, and Javier hoped with such ardent hope that he felt it ringing and buzzing through every inch of his body that it would stay that way. He also had good reason to believe that it would- Charles was always level-headed, always ready to think things through, always one to ask questions first. 

But Javier also had a few more ambitious hopes than everyone getting out of this unharmed. He hoped that there was an understanding to be reached, he hoped for a chance to explain what he had to explain to himself over and over again for the past week and a half, and in that smallest and brightest and still improbably guileless corner of his mind, he hoped that this was the impossible help he’d known better than to ask for, than to even think about. 

He looked up at Charles, who had stopped his horse but made no move to dismount, and Charles looked down at him. It was a look that he’d been on the receiving end of a few times before: opaque but not hard, mildly disinterested but deceptively perceptive, guarded but not at all anxious. They were both stuck there considering their words, and it confirmed to Javier that this was a chance encounter, that there was nothing prepared because Charles hadn’t thought he would see them. It was tense, and then just as Javier had readied himself to break the silence with some insufficient, perfunctory greeting, Charles spoke.

“The papers said Dutch’s Boys fled northwest, back up to North Elizabeth.” He was matter-of-fact, asking and not asking. 

“We ain’t with him anymore,” said Javier, feeling not nearly as unaffected as he sounded, as he looked, and there was an aftertaste from the words that lingered sickly in his mouth. To say it so plainly, to say it out loud at all, to know absolutely that it was true, that was new. He heard Bill shift behind him, and he really was right behind him; it would’ve been uncomfortably close except for the fact that it wasn’t. 

Charles raised his eyebrows slightly. “I guess not,” 

“What are you doing back here?” It took a moment to find the words, and Javier winced a bit at how harsh they sounded, but Charles didn’t seem to care. 

“I heard about...what happened, read about it, I guess I wanted to see for myself,” He looked away, took a long look out over the water, “See about Arthur, mostly,”

“Okay, well, Arthur’s here,” Javier wondered then if he should’ve led with that, because at those words, Charles was out of his saddle and taking those few steps to make the distance between them a more conversational one, and his brown eyes were softer when they met Javier’s own.

“He is?” he asked, small and earnest and so very sad.

“Yeah, Bill and I found him, after the Pinkertons left. He’s- well, he was in pretty rough shape and-, ” 

Javier swallowed, having a hard time finding the right thing to say, but Charles nodded, and he looked at the ground, his hands in the pockets of the threadbare blue jacket that he wore, the one that was almost exactly the same shade as that dotted shirt underneath it. “I understand, just- where’s he at now?”

“In the cabin,” Javier said, and he gestured at the building behind them like it was obvious, and Charles looked at him like it wasn’t. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s in there, what did you think I meant?” 

“Why would-” Charles cut himself off, shaking his head, tearing away his incredulous gaze, taking his right hand out his pocket, a scrap of newspaper clutched within it. He straightened it out, and it was clear that it had been creased and crumpled and reread a hundred times, and he quickly reread it again before offering the scrap to Javier, “This says that he’s dead,”

Javier scanned the half-dozen paragraphs for Arthur’s name, and sure enough, it did say that. Second-in-command of the Van der Linde gang, with a price on his head in the thousands of dollars, a list of all those states he was wanted in and all the crimes he was suspected of, reported dead by the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Javier looked back up at Charles.

“He’s not. I can see why they might’ve thought that considering the state we found him in, but he’s alive,”

Before he’d even finished speaking, Charles moved past him, towards the cabin, towards that side door with the wooden stairs. He wasn’t walking particularly fast, but there was a shakiness to his steps that Javier noticed as he walked behind him. He was struck then with the memory of Arthur showing up at Lakay, of Charles embracing him straight away, if only briefly, and of how, when he’d been the first of five to show up there and he’d told the gang that the rest of the boys had made it out alive, Charles had just about slumped over in relief at the sound of Arthur’s name. It was like that but better, because this time Charles had been absolutely certain that his friend was dead and Javier had delivered him a miracle, and it was like that but worse, because as soon as Charles walked in that door and saw Arthur laying there, wasting and pale with his bruised face still tinted greenish-yellow, he’d realize how fleeting of a miracle this was. But it was still _something_ , Javier reassured himself as Charles started pushing open the door. He would have a chance to say goodbye, at least, and it might be bleak and lingering and overwhelming, but it would be more closure than any bluntly-worded newspaper could ever give him even if he read it another hundred times. Javier still had the scrap of paper in his hand, and put it in the pocket of his own blue jacket. Charles hesitated in the half-open doorway, the warm glow of firelight spilling over his body as he turned to look out behind him, and Javier looked back as well.

Bill, who had been nothing but a silent shadow through the entire exchange, had hung back, still several yards away at the roadside, standing with Taima, patting her gray neck, her cheek. “I can put her up if you want?”

Charles nodded his permission, and then he stepped into the cabin. Javier followed, shutting the door behind them. Charles spared a moment to glance around the room but any assessment was only half-hearted; he walked across the cluttered floor to the bed where Arthur was sleeping. Once again, Javier grew nervous, though maybe it was that his nerves had never subsided. He didn’t step up to the bedside with Charles, instead, he noticed all the belongings strewn about the place: Bill’s rifle and one of the old camp repeaters leaning against a shelf, clothing and blankets spilling out of the trunk at the foot of the bed and onto the floor. Empty tins had been left on the shelves they’d been taken from, left beside the bed, left on the little table, on the mantle. It smelled like the fish they’d cooked an hour ago; it smelled like stale sweat. 

Charles had sat down on that short wooden stool near the head of Arthur’s bed, having moved the canteen that had been previously sitting on it to the floor, and Javier worried about what he might think of the sick man’s condition. He worried that they might’ve been unknowingly neglectful, that under other care he might not have deteriorated in such a way, that maybe under someone else’s watch he would’ve maintained that slight bit of vigor he’d had that first morning, when he’d talked to them, when he had sat upright on a horse to come here. He worried then, but not for the first time, that the assessment he’d made of Arthur’s mortality was misguided, that the decision to not seek out a doctor or medicine or anything was secretly born out of selfishness, and not out of prudence or pragmatism or knowledge of what a death sentence looked like. He stood there quietly, awkwardly, for long minutes, taking in the mess, and when he caught himself in the mirror above the shaving basin again, he worried about what Charles must think of the state of him, of the uncharacteristic disarray. 

But Charles didn’t say anything of the sort. He sat there, and he brushed the stringy hair off of Arthur’s forehead. Arthur was sleeping deeply, his breathing audibly hoarse, and it didn’t seem that Charles wanted to wake him. He just watched. Arthur didn’t look pained, just sickly and weak and small and so unlike the man he’d been not a few months ago. Javier watched Charles watching him, and he decided to sit down on his bedroll in front of the fire, and he wondered what he should do, what he should say, if there was any consolation he could give, but once again Charles beat him to it. 

“What changed?” he asked, not nearly as accusatory as he had every right to be, not looking away from Arthur as he spoke. 

“What do you mean?” That hadn’t been the question Javier was anticipating.

“What happened that- that you’re here, and not with Dutch?”

“A lot of things happened,” Javier said wryly, tiredly, and he sighed, and considered where to start, “But that day- the one that the paper wrote about, I guess the thing that made me and Bill split was… was that, that, that the Pinkertons got Abigail while we were robbing that train, and Dutch was just gonna leave her, but Arthur got her back, and I wasn’t here for this part, but what Bill tells me is that when he comes back to camp, he says that the Pinkertons said that Micah was the rat,”

Charles turned to him at that, the look on his face somewhere between shocked and disgusted and unsurprised, but he didn’t interrupt. 

“And, well, you were there when Molly said she’d talked, you saw what she got, so when Arthur says that- and this is when I got there, I was out on watch and saw the Pinkertons coming- so Arthur says that and it looks like Susan is about ready to do the same to Micah, but he shoots her first, shoots her in the gut, and all he has to say for himself, all he _does_ is he just keeps telling Dutch that Arthur’s lying-”

“Miss Grimshaw’s dead?” Charles stops him. 

“Yeah. Yeah, Bill buried her. And after Micah killed her, it's a standoff, y'know? Dutch sides with Micah and they got their guns drawn against Arthur and John, ‘cause he believes Micah over Arthur which makes no goddamn sense-”

“So you two stand with Arthur?” and Charles sounded like he understood, but he didn’t.

“ _No_ ,” was the answer, the astonished and defeated and choked out answer, and Javier had his head in his hands, could feel a disbelieving, grimacing smile warping his face as he said it, could feel that he’d gotten too worked up, took a second to regain his composure, “No, we didn’t. The Pinkertons showed up before anyone shot, or I guess, anyone else shot- and, and that was when we split; everyone ran but I didn't go with Dutch, and Bill went with me. Turned back for Arthur and Grimshaw a few hours later,”

The cabin was quiet at that, and Javier didn’t want to look at Charles, didn’t want to see the way the other man must be looking at him, this wasn't quite the explanation he had hoped to give, but before the moment had been strung out for too long, the front door opened. Bill came in loudly, as he always did, and he set his hat on the table, and hung his coat on the back of his chair, and he ducked around that partitioning wall to see two men who were sitting in silence, and a third who was still fast asleep. 

“Charles, I assume you’re stayin’ here?”

“If you boys don’t mind?”

At the return of that neutral tone, Javier dared to look up again, and when he did, Charles was back to watching Arthur.


	11. Chapter 11

It was like waking up from one dream into another, that was how unfamiliar Arthur’s voice had become. Bill had briefly awoken, not too long ago, at the sensation of someone carefully stepping over his body. He had half-opened his eyes long enough only to see Javier still sleeping next to him, and there was a split second of panic in his still mostly-asleep mind before he frantically reminded himself that there was now someone else in this cabin who could be walking around at these hours. It was still early. Back to sleep he went, willing himself to pay no mind to that largely incomprehensible voice that was whispering softly only a few feet away from him. The dream he then found himself in was one of those hazy ones, indistinct and ambiguous, neither off-putting nor comforting, and it was terribly slow. It felt like waiting for something to happen without any sense of anticipation or excitement or fear, or even any sense of what exactly it  _ was _ that was unfolding right in front of his eyes; all that he had known was a supreme sense of powerlessness, and it was unclear if he should be resentful or thankful for that fact. But he had eased from that formlessness into a state of consciousness, and it wasn’t in the way that he often awoke, so suddenly cut off from whatever had been happening in his head before. It was a smoother transition, reality seeping into his head until finally, he realized what it was that he was hearing. 

Arthur Morgan was speaking again. Speaking in full sentences, at least a few of them, and his voice was rough and broken from disuse, from disease, but it didn’t sound quite so labored as it did after they’d first brought him down from the mountainside. When he had communicated in the past week, in those more present moments, it had mostly been nonverbally: a shake or a nod of his head, those emotive eyes, faintly reaching hands, that was all Bill or Javier got. There had been a few words, primarily a muttered  _ thanks _ every now and then, and Bill had come to wonder if the lack of speech was due more to inability or to unwillingness. Not that he would blame Morgan for the latter: plenty of men in his position wouldn’t have a lot to say. He was dying, and it wasn’t as if they had been on good terms before, and anything they had to talk about would be just another pain piled up upon him. 

That idea that Javier had, that had led them back to Beaver Hollow, had led them to Arthur, that idea of finding out the truth from him: that had been put on hold almost immediately, and by now it was gone. What truth was there left to be told that hadn’t already grown apparent? If there were things Arthur could tell Bill that he hadn’t already figured out himself, he doubted that any of it would change the heart of what had happened. It wasn’t something that Bill wanted to think about, and he never  _ chose _ to think about it, but how much choice had he ever had in his own thoughts? When Charles Smith had come around the lake last night, he had thought about it then: everything that had gone wrong, everything wrong that they had done. That he had done. That he had watched. That he had elected to ignore. 

All those last pillars of his life that he had clung to so desperately not even two weeks ago seemed so conspicuously flimsy now. It was obvious. It was all so obvious now, in retrospect, from the outside. It was obvious now that everyone had seen it but him, like his life was one of those jokes that he didn’t understand until everybody was already finished laughing at him. That’s what it had felt like, watching people he’d known for years pull away or leave outright without any explanation; not that he had ever asked for one, or that he would have listened if they’d tried. 

It was familiar, was the worst part. To be shocked when the floor falls out from under you even though every step had been met with a groan for months and months. It had happened before. It was Dutch van der Linde, and it was Colonel Irving, and it was his own father. How many times would he seek a sense of purpose before he realized that ‘purpose’ was just an excuse to be wielded as another man’s weapon? How many times would he give his single-minded loyalty before he realized that it was only ever reciprocated at another man’s convenience? How many times would he do the wrong thing because the right man told him to? Always, at the end of everything, after every desperate declaration and every shattered devotion, he was left only with himself and his memories. 

And they weren’t all bad memories. There were those seldom bright moments when he had felt loved, or respected, or like he had been saved, if only temporarily, from his own destructiveness, his abrasiveness, his apathy, his inadequacy, his sickness. Maybe that was why he had kept trying. That was why, when he looked back, he felt pride alongside revulsion, fondness alongside anger. Why he felt just as likely to wander across something else, someone else, that would make him do it all over again like the fool he was. Gaining everything just to lose it again, to be left feeling used by the end. How to hate someone and love them in the very same breath, that was the only lesson he’d ever really learned. Sixteen years since his daddy passed and he still remembered that one. Those Army boys had joined his old man in that, and Dutch would too.

The greatest man he’d ever known. Bill knew that he wasn’t the only one who had thought that, who had said that, who had believed that with every drop of blood in his body, who had made that as essential to his being as any other fact of life. Snow’s cold, and fire’s hot, and the sun goes from that one place to the other place, and Dutch van der Linde is  _ different _ . And when it was good, it was so good. 

Javier had said it last night, had spoken it aloud for the first time since that night when everything went to hell in a way that no amount of faith could ever fix: they weren’t with Dutch anymore. Never would be again. But Bill was still here with men that he’d called his brothers, that Dutch had called his brothers, and he knew that the parts of him that had loved this life, these people, that man; those parts would keep him here as long as they would have him. For as familiar as this was, they were the difference. He had to remind himself of that. He wasn’t alone, not yet, at least. 

Arthur was talking to Charles. It was a hushed conversation, a slow one, and he could hardly make anything out at first, but wasn’t it still nice to hear? From what he could understand, and gradually that grew to be more and more of what was said, it was Charles asking after Arthur’s condition: are you hungry, are you thirsty, are you comfortable, is there anything I can get you, is there anything I can do? It was Arthur telling what he remembered of the past weeks, Arthur still astonished at the fact of Charles being here, Arthur saying that he’s already got what he wanted most. 

There had been times, many of them, when Bill had gotten caught up in his jealousy, his fragility, his fear; when he’d given in to his temper, when he’d given in to ill-thought-out impulse, and the people around him had suffered for it. Everyone in this cabin, in fact, and a lot of the folks that he’d laid in the ground. For all that he called Dutch his savior, it was in the aftermath of those moments that had him thinking about the parts of himself that he could never really be saved from, not for long. The parts that kept him on the outskirts, that kept him fighting for attention, that made him laughable, that made him undeserving of what he'd been given. There was a thought he’d had a few times, after hearing certain stories around the campfire, when Bill had wondered about the man he might’ve grown into if he’d been another kid that Dutch had taken in. Would he have been more like John, like Arthur? Would he have been smarter or kinder or more coolheaded? Would he know the right things to say, would he know how to act, would people want to be around him,  _ choose _ to be around him? Would mistakes be more easily forgiven; would he be trusted, respected?

Now, he knew what that imagined life would’ve gotten him: left for dead in a prison, left for dead on a robbery, left to suffer at the hands of disease, pushed aside when plans conflicted, pushed aside for the promise of riches, anything less than absolute loyalty labeled an absolute betrayal. That was how he had finally figured that Dutch wasn’t so different after all. To treat the boys he’d raised in such a way, how typical a man had he turned out to be. It should’ve been obvious. 

There was light coming in. He could feel it now. Charles seemed more than willing to help out Arthur, but still, there was the rest of the day’s chores to contend with, so he really ought to get up. He rubbed at his eyes, yawned, and willed himself to sit up in his bedroll, feeling cooler air hit his back when he did so. The fabric of his union suit was so thin now, plenty of rips in it too, how long had he put off buying another? He opened his eyes, and saw what he thought he would- the partitioning curtain was tucked away, and Charles was back on that stool by Arthur’s bed, and Arthur was sitting up, and those bloodshot eyes of his were fixed on Charles like there wasn’t anything else in the world worth looking at. 

And then Bill looked over to his left, and he was surprised to see that Javier was also awake. He was sitting with his back towards the fire, slightly hunched over and looking at him, and he spoke when they caught each other’s gaze.“You hear all of that?” 

His voice was relaxed and husky, sleep lingering within it. He was running his hand through his hair but it was messy, half of it hanging over his face. There were circles under his tired eyes, and his stubble would nearly be classed as a beard by now, and he had a tiny smile, the corners of his mouth turned ever-so-slightly upward, and Bill felt himself mimicking it.

“Most of it,” he yawned again, rubbed a knot at the back of his neck, “Well, maybe not most, but some of it,”

Javier gave a small, breathy chuckle at that. “Good thing to wake up to, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is," Bill huffed out a laugh as well, "Never thought I'd see you happy to be woken up this early,"

"I don't like being woken up by you; this is different,"

Bill hummed at the teasing tone. "Sure it is,"


	12. Chapter 12

Charles had left not too long after Arthur had gone back to sleep. He had seemed exhausted, which made sense; talking to Charles for as long as he had, interspersed with a meal and a handful of coughing fits, that was more activity than he’d had all at once since they’d arrived at the cabin. So he was exhausted, but maybe also lighter. Something in his face had shifted, in his eyes, and even if it was subtle or possibly imagined, it was encouraging. 

Javier had listened to them speaking as he slowly awoke, and he listened to them as he dressed and ate and got ready for the day ahead, but after that first spurt of joy at hearing Arthur speak, he had grown to feel like he was intruding on something that wasn’t his to witness. Listening in on two people who had good reason to believe they would never see each other again, that was something else. It was wave after wave of raw adoration and disbelief from both sides of the conversation even as they spoke only of the mundane. It wasn’t any topic broached that had Javier feeling uncomfortable, it was the closeness of it, everything that went unspoken, those softly uttered devotions said by way of _how-are-you?_ It was hard to imagine himself in that scenario, revealing himself to a close friend with an audience in the eaves; for all that he was a performer, there were certain things meant to be shared with one person, and one person alone. There was a difference between a _show_ of emotion, a slow song or a sad story or comforting words, sincere but still crafted; between that and just _showing_ emotion, expressed without purpose, involuntary and primal and fragile, those times when everything that held him together fell apart, in sadness or in anger or in relief or in something more complicated and confusing than any of that, times when the row of neat stitches tore and the wound would bare itself with all its ugliness- or honesty. He had been on the verge of that last night, and that was what he had heard in the morning, an unintended outpouring of honesty, within gentle words and gentle gestures and two sets of eyes that seemed content never to leave each other. 

Clearly, Charles didn’t feel that way, or else he would’ve waited until the other two men were awake or out of the cabin. He would’ve _asked_ them to leave the cabin, maybe. Javier knew that he knew how to ask for privacy, that was a skill he’d acquired within weeks of joining up with the gang last December. It was a necessity, living how they did. But maybe he didn’t realize how all of that had sounded, or maybe things were different when a man was bedridden and half-dead and miraculously alive. Maybe he had more important things to worry about more than being overheard, showing his vulnerability. It was inconsequential, truly. Not worth all the thinking, the overthinking. 

Another thought that Javier had that morning, another feeling, was this: it had stung, just a bit, that Arthur had hardly spoken to him in all this time but he’d had so much to say to Charles. It made sense, it really did; being careful and kind and vigilant for a week and a half didn’t negate any of his previous cruelties. Charles had been a better friend than he had, in so many ways, even if he had left before everything was over. Javier had tried to not let himself be hurt by it. 

So Charles had gone out later that morning and returned not two hours later with a pair of rabbits hanging off his saddle. Javier had been out on the northern shore of the lake, on the middle of the three small, rocky peninsulas that ate into the water up there, when Taima had come out from the tree-lined path east of the cabin, and Charles had taken his rabbits inside. 

It had been one of the poorer days for fishing. Only two bluegills that had been too small to keep, though maybe Javier would have if Charles hadn’t been out hunting. He’d had one promising tug earlier, on a slender, greenish-blue minnow lure, might’ve been one of those pikes with how strong it was, but the fish had been scared off before he felt a bite solid enough to set the hook. It was disappointing, and it also wasn’t, because eating something other than fish was a very appealing thought. Nothing had tasted as good as that very first monstrous salmon had, even though the cooking technique had been somewhat refined since then. So Javier gave it another five minutes after Charles got back, and then he reeled in the line, removed the lure to its place in the tackle box, collapsed the rod, and headed back to the cabin. It was earlier than usual, and he never walked along the actual path around the lake when he went out to fish or when he returned, rather he clung as close as he could to the shoreline. He watched his step where it was rocky, those places where the land rose a foot or two above the water and a misplaced foot might send him in, and he took his time looking all across this little valley when the minuscule cliffs and mud and grass gave way to pebbled beaches. It was slower than the road would be, and his boots got dirtier, but he had it almost memorized now, all the soft patches of earth that would give under his weight, the half-hidden stones and fallen branches that might trip him up, the trees that the songbirds preferred, the withering flowers that he’d be sure not to trample though it seemed their season was already over. 

That cutting wind was back again, it was a regular now. These days he’d see crisp sunlight through the windows when he woke up and then step out into a day where no amount of brightness could make up for its sting. Sometimes he would turn his face up to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, the only skin he dared expose, and it was nearly wonderful for a moment, it was a thousand memories flooding back in, it was vital and tangible and grounding- until all the numerous unpleasantries made themselves known. He could dress anticipating the wind, and pick a spot along the lake where his face was turned away from it, but that meandering walk back to the cabin, it would always find a way to hit him then. 

By the time he made his way back to the cabin, and the wall of warmth hit him as walked in the door, and he set his things in their place beside the tall cabinet that was beside that door, Charles and Bill were already making short work of butchering the skinned rabbits. Both of them greeted Javier when he came in, but neither stepped away from their tasks or said much otherwise. He had come here planning to volunteer for the job that Bill was currently doing, so instead he poked at the fire with the stick they kept for that purpose, and, satisfied with timid flames and the large reserve of coals as was best for the cooking that was sure to happen soon, he turned to watch the others work.

The shorter of that short work was Charles’ doing: he stood at the sink with the wooden board that Javier used for preparing his catches laid over the metal basin, the rabbit atop it, the heads and the offal of both set aside in a tarnished old coffee tin. He made well-practiced cuts to detach the meaty hind legs, the leaner front legs, to cleave upward through the sternum and then carefully work meat away from the ribs, pressing his weight down to force his hunting knife through its spine, severing saddle from ribcage. Bill was at the table working on his, in his chair that was nearer the front door than the sink, and he looked up intermittently, looked over to see what Charles was doing though his view of any cuts being made was obviously obscured by the man’s body, but his futile spying must have been more for reassurance than guidance. The final product was the same as Charles, all the same cuts arrived at more slowly, with a knife that was clearly duller. 

Charles moved his board with the pieces of meat and bone to the table when he was done, and he pumped out the water to wash his hands, rinsing off blood and general viscera, with soap to scrub away the fatty, greasy residue from handling the meat. Javier, anticipating the next step, wanting to be of use, bent down to the bottom shelf of the open cabinet he was stood next to and took out the cast iron stew pot that they hadn’t yet cooked with. 

“Using this, I imagine?” It was heavy, and Javier switched from holding it by the seemingly too-thin handle to having his hands under its base. It was cool and smooth to the touch, pitch black, seasoned well, not a speck of rust upon it. Arthur’s friend had taken good care of his things, the broken mirror aside, that was what Javier had learned about the man. Maybe with Charles here, Arthur would finally deign to speak about whoever’s house it was that they were living in. 

Charles nodded, and stepped aside, away from the sink, allowing Javier to set the pot in the basin, under the faucet, and as gingerly as he placed it, it still hit the surface with a thud. He set to using the hand pump, feeling its resistance, feeling Charles’ eyes upon him, hearing Bill get out his seat and head across the room, hearing the clanging of metal against stone as the trivet was, presumably somewhat clumsily, set in the fireplace. 

“That’s good, I think,” said Charles when the water filled about three-quarters of the pot. He took a handful of the bonier pieces of rabbit to it- the ribcages, the pelvises, the arms, and dropped them in the water, some of it splashing out; now it was Javier’s turn to step aside. Lifting it out of the sink, and how heavy must it be now, Charles carried it over to the fireplace, placed it down upon the trivet, and then Bill retreated to the sink to rinse his hands as well. 

“Guess you weren’t so lucky today, huh?” Bill said, looking over at Javier as he did so, half of a smile on his face. 

“Well, I didn’t need to be lucky today, did I?” Javier drew out the first word, and found himself a matching grin, if only for a second, “Besides, it’ll be nice to have something different,”

“That is very true,” conceded Bill, and he looked over into that coffee tin set next to the faucet with all extra rabbit bits inside, “Say, you think one of them pike would go for a heart, or a kidney or somethin’?”

Javier considered it, eyeing the specimen above the mantle as he often did. “I don’t know, never tried fishing with any of that before, maybe?”

“Seems like a fish that’d appreciate a good meal,” Bill was looking at it too. Its huge mouth was filled with little blade-like teeth, and its white-spotted body was thick, would’ve been well-muscled in life, but still with an air of gracefulness about it, or maybe that was all in the way it was positioned, posed with an arching back. How must it have looked lurking in that lake, how must every smaller creature have cowered from it, how must the beast have fought as it was on the line, being pulled out of the water? 

“I suppose it’d be worth trying,” It was now Javier’s turn to concede, though not entirely, “But I guarantee you that those things eat meals a lot bigger than a rabbit’s heart,”

“Sure, but- hey, maybe they’d want some variety too,”

It was a few hours later, an idle afternoon later, that the rabbits had been stewed and dinner was served. Charles had gathered some herbs as well when he was out in the woods, and the fragrance of sage and thyme along with the meatiness of the game had filled the cabin as it cooked. There wasn’t room for three at the table, not without moving it, but Javier imagined that even if it wouldn’t be such a hassle to make more room Charles would still prefer to take his meal at Arthur’s bedside. He had ladled out Arthur’s portion first, going through the pot for the tenderest bites of meat and cutting them down even smaller, getting plenty of broth as well, and he let it cool off as he ate his own bowl full, not yet waking Arthur. 

That left Javier and Bill to much the same routine as they had before, the same conversations. The food was good, they decided, but would’ve been even better with potatoes or carrots or something of the sort, like the stews that they were used to. One difference in routine was that they could head out to the porch earlier with Charles taking over all responsibility for Arthur, at least for today, and with the dishes being left in the sink to deal with later. It was also Javier’s intention to give some space to Charles in the cabin, to avoid eavesdropping again when Arthur woke up. 

So there they were, Bill in his chair and Javier with his guitar, and usually, they came out when the sun was already half-set, but now they would see it all, start to finish. It was odd, how quickly things had changed, and how naturally. Last night Javier had wondered if he’d be forced to draw his revolver, if it would take hours to form even a fragile peace, and yet here they were, with Charles being drawn into their fold rather seamlessly. It was all for Arthur, of course, he knew now, and he would’ve been less fearful if he had realized it then rather than focusing only on himself. 

He was under no illusion that all the nasty things he, or Bill, had said to Charles would be wiped away and forgotten- but they were made tolerable, ignorable by the circumstances. By a shared loyalty. That was how it always went, this hard life they lived, offences could be brushed aside when duty so demanded. You would remember them, how could you not, and you weren’t _forgiving_ , not really, but you were permissive. Your brother gets away with what a stranger doesn’t, or at least he gets off lighter. And maybe Charles didn’t see him as a brother anymore, maybe all that had gone away after the oil fields, maybe even earlier than that, but regardless, they could still work together. What other option did they have?

A while later, an hour maybe, a dozen songs, the sun below the horizon: that was when Charles joined them. He leaned back against the door after shutting it, and he had in hand his simple wooden pipe, which he lit. The harsh-yet-sweet scent of the tobacco was nearly intoxicating after a week without, though in hard times he’d gone longer, but almost as soon as Javier could smell it the wind blew it away. He was glad for it, knowing he didn’t have it within himself to ask Charles to share. He kept playing until Charles spoke up. 

“Arthur said something to me, and I’ve been wondering- when you found him, you two see any sign of John?” 

Javier stopped his hand plucking the strings, relaxed the one on the fretboard, and looked back over his shoulder to see Bill wordlessly shrugging his shoulders. “We saw Old Boy dead next to Calypso,”

“Sure, Arthur mentioned that, but was there anything else?” Charles’ voice was steady, relaxed, hardly matching his own question. 

“Nothing I can think of, we came here straight after finding him,” replied Javier, with a slight shake of his head, gaze turned down, “Bill, you see anything?”

The other man was seemingly startled at the sound of his name, his eyes wide, but he answered quickly. “I saw what you saw. And camp, I guess, but it didn’t look like nobody’d been there except us,” He turned, looking up at Charles, “Why, did Arthur say something about where he went?”

Charles nodded. “Yeah, he said John got away, got back to his family, and he sounded pretty confident about it. Guess I just wanted to know if he has any reason to be,”

“They would’ve mentioned in the papers if they got John, right?” said Javier. He wanted it to be true. 

“Maybe, but he didn’t have quite the bounty that Arthur did, and something other than law could’ve got him- I don’t know. You’re probably right,” Charles sighed, and he sounded subdued when he continued, “I hope he got out, for all their sakes,”

“I hope so too,” said Bill, softer than often he was, and then: “Javier, while we're already talkin' about him, I been meaning to ask you for a while but- when John came back to camp, after the train and Dutch sayin’ that he was- well, he said that Dutch had left him to- to die, and-”

Javier cut him off; he had felt instantaneously panicked as Bill spoke, could feel shame already rising in his stomach. “That was true,”

“No, I already figured that much- what I was asking was that…” He briefly paused to find his words, and Javier dreaded what they might be, braced himself for impact, “ ...that I thought you were with Dutch for that whole job?”

And there it was. Eyes on the strings of his guitar, on the placement of his hands, wishing suddenly for a southern summer again, for the buzz of insects to fill this silence, until he managed to answer in a small voice, defeated once again. “I was with him, yeah,”

What a witness he was. It was like all those folks asking him about the girl on the ferry, back when Arthur was the most insistent of them all. It was like that, except that now he was no longer blind to it. It was like that, except that this time he could’ve done something, said something- there was no trigger pulled prematurely- but he hadn’t. 

“Jesus,” mumbled Bill, hardly audible but still sharp in Javier’s ears. It seemed like a foregone conclusion, the way he was asking, but still, he sounded surprised. Taken aback, perhaps.

And then, after another empty moment, Charles said flatly: “Guess you really did think he was the rat,”

It was just as true as it wasn’t. What could he say to that? Say to Bill that he would’ve done just the same, say to Charles that he was trying his best to make up for it, say to Arthur that he should’ve listened sooner, say to John that he’d still loved him even as he rode away?

He stared down. Down at his hands, down at himself. Pulled into himself. How must they be looking at him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking a lot longer on this one, the main delay was too much Wikipedia and board games. On the bright side, I now know more about how to butcher a rabbit than I ever thought I would!


	13. Chapter 13

Things had shifted. Had been shifting, since Charles showed up a week ago. It was in the way the days went on, the way the work got done, the way that Arthur continued to hold on. For everything there was that had happened so fast, now, it seemed, was the time for slowing. Everything was so long. The mornings were long, and the daylight lingered even as the season dictated that it ought to be shrinking, and the nights were long. The longest, maybe. 

Bill would wake up as sunlight poured in through the windows, second now behind Charles, and before the day even started he found himself wishing it was over, counting the hours before he could sleep again. If he was lucky, Charles would go out hunting, and he could sneak in a nap. He wouldn’t when the other man was sticking around the cabin, afraid that it would seem like laziness, or unhelpfulness, or even just that he would get in the way of whatever else was going on. Of course, they had known each other for a while and surely Charles had observed something of his sleeping patterns in all those months that they had shared a tent, but it felt different here. Charles thinking him lazy, that hadn’t mattered to Bill nearly so much then as it did now. 

So when Charles did stay at the cabin all day, it was only after those excruciating, frustrating hours of lying awake each night that his treasured sleep would come. And even so, despite all of that, the week went by even quicker than the last one. There was a bit more variety to it, but regardless of that, they were all just moving along with nothing to look forward to, everything running together with no plan, no end in sight. No end worth seeing. Floating along in this state had its torturous moments and its pleasant ones, and still, it was probably nicer than whatever would come next. Not that Bill had thought much about that. He didn’t want to think about that. 

Right now, as he was walking that short distance back to the cabin after tending to the horses and seeing Taima and Charles off, he was mostly thinking about how nice it was going to feel to lay back down. He thought about those thick winter coats that all the horses had now, and about how the sky had been partially overcast the past two days, and how it seemed likely that rain would come soon. When it came down, cold and windy, it would be miserable. That, or snow would come. Probably not a lot, they weren’t yet halfway through the fall, but there might be some. Either way, the jobs of feeding the four of them that Javier and Charles had undertaken would become, if not more difficult outright, at least more unpleasant. At the moment, Javier was out on the peninsula directly across from that grassy patch of land where the horses mostly stayed, though when Bill had looked across at him before heading to the house, had waved at him, it hadn’t seemed as if he’d caught anything yet. It was early, though. 

Bill picked out a few pieces of firewood before stepping onto the porch, and that was another chore they had to do now. The large stock that had been here when they first arrived was depleted, but fortunately, it was easy enough to come by suitable logs around here. He opened the front door and walked across the length of the house to deposit the wood next to the fireplace, and he did so noisily, half-placing and half-dropping them on the thick stone lip of it. What Charles had added a few hours ago was now mostly burnt down, so Bill added two of the larger pieces, arranged them so they would catch. Satisfied with the flames, he was back at the front of the house and shrugging off his leather coat when Arthur spoke.

“Charles?” he asked, and didn’t he always? He was hoarse, quiet. 

“Oh, he just went out hunting,” replied Bill, hanging his coat on his chair and going back into the main room, “Why, you need something?”

Arthur was lying flat on his back, his eyes closed. He let out a small huff that might’ve been a laugh. “Not really. A drink I suppose, if you’re already here,”

“Sure,” Bill checked that the canteen at Arthur’s bedside was full, and it was, and he sat down on the plain wooden stool at the head of the bed. He hadn’t done this much since Charles got here. Helped out here and there, sure, but it wasn’t like it was before. Bill wasn’t sure how he felt about it; most obviously he should be relieved, and he was, because it had been so difficult, had him nervous in anticipation and embarrassed in the aftermath. On the other hand, it had also felt like something of a penance, a brotherly duty; like he had been necessary in a way that he wasn’t anymore. It had also seemed unfair to Charles at first, but by now it was clear that taking care of Arthur himself was the man’s preference. Javier had volunteered at a few meals and been gently turned down. Maybe that would change, he might grow weary of it eventually, but maybe not. 

It had certainly improved Arthur’s spirits. Not that he was  _ spirited _ , not at all, but he was speaking every day. On the rougher ones, it would be short sentences, half-choked and hazy, devolving into dramatic coughing fits that ended with gasping and wheezing. Charles would tell him to keep quiet then, to not hurt himself further, and usually, he obliged. Other times, somewhat rarer times, he and Charles would converse for hours. Or at least that’s what Bill assumed was happening, those nights that he and Javier stayed out on the porch until dusk had long since grown into twilight, into night. For all he knew, Charles did most of the talking then, however preposterous of a concept that would once have been. Either way, it was good for Arthur, he knew, to have that. To have someone that he actually wanted to see, to speak with, to spend time with, whatever time it was that he had. To be tethered to someone by choice, rather than obligation. 

Bill helped Arthur sit up enough not to choke, moving him a bit higher up on the bed. When he uncapped the canteen and tipped it into Arthur’s mouth, Arthur moved his left hand to the canteen as well, though he did very little to actually hold it, ghosting over it more than anything, his fingertips resting on its cool surface, his hand brushing against Bill’s, but only very lightly. The sound of Arthurs’s swallowing was louder in his ears than he thought it ought to be, and then Arthur pulled away, resting his head on the wall behind him, his eyes still closed. 

“You good?” asked Bill, and when Arthur nodded, Bill realized that this might be an opportunity: he wasn’t often alone with Arthur when the man was awake. He was struck by the impulse to say something else, something more, something he’d thought about and pushed aside a dozen times before. That impulse hadn’t always worked out well for him before, but nevertheless, he decided to go through with it. He started out slow.

“I was thinking, we ain’t talked much recently, have we?”

Arthur sighed, opened his eyes. Blue-green and bloodshot and exhausted, what they all had gotten used to by now, sunken into that gaunt face that was reddened in places and pallid in others. “Not much, no,”

“Well, I just- I just wanted to say that-” Now Bill sighed as well, and he tried to remember what it was that he had wanted to say, how it was that had he wanted to say it, and he fought through himself, looking down at the canteen in his hands and fiddling with cap all the while as he got the words out, “I wanted to say that I’ve thought about it a lot, y’know, everything that happened back there and- and I didn’t see it then, but- I know you were right. About Dutch, and all of that. So I’m sorry that I didn’t treat you right or ever listen to you, and maybe this don’t mean much to you but I just felt like- like I should say it anyway,”

He swallowed, feeling his heart pounding through his chest. He wondered if Arthur could hear it too. Saying all that, it was harder than he had thought it would be, and not nearly so impossible as he had feared. Tentatively, he turned his gaze up, back towards Arthur. The man was staring right at him still, his eyes narrowed, the look on his face giving away nothing of his thoughts. Nothing obvious, at least. 

“There are a lot of folks who deserve to hear that from you more than I do,” He was soft-spoken, as always he was nowadays, and his voice was just as kind as it was bitter. 

Bill looked away again. Up, this time, at that painting above the bed, above Arthur’s head. It was a summer’s day: an aspen or a birch or some other light-barked tree in the midground, as green as ever it would be, a path winding its way through a colorful meadow to a small homestead, a lush forest beyond, the sky bright blue and open. “I know,”

“Not many of them are still here, but Charles is,”

He studied the painting a moment longer. “You think he’d care about that?” 

Arthur wheezed out a short, wry chuckle. “I ain’t sure, but it sounds like you care an awful lot, else you wouldn’t have said anything to me,”

“Maybe,” Bill tore his gaze away from the bucolic landscape, back to the worn canteen in his lap. How many years had he carried it? “So what if I do?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Bill, I wasn't-  _ insulting _ you, accusing you of nothing; it’s good that you care about it, better than not caring,” Arthur paused, his exasperation taking the breath out of him, and when he continued it was at a relaxed, plodding pace, “And it does mean something to me, and even though I ain’t said it yet, I hope you and Javier know that it also means something that you boys went back for me. It was more than I expected, and I doubt I would’ve been around even this long if you two hadn’t done that for me,”

“Well, I wish that you didn’t- that I didn’t make you expect so little of me. All these years we known each other-'' he broke off at that. His vision blurred when he looked back at Arthur, lying there and looking so weak, so pitiful; and then back at the painting, which was a thousand better days that in this moment he’d rather forget; and then back to his starting place, the army canteen, a relic of the man he used to be. His eyes clenched shut. Just how many different men had he been, and how many would he become? Only a few short weeks ago, he wouldn’t have recognized himself as he was now. Weeping for the man he’d turned his rifle against; brother turned traitor turned brother again. Arthur gave him a minute, but he didn’t finish the thought, not out loud. 

“There’s a lot of things that- could’ve gone differently, but this? This sickness of mine? It ain’t one of ‘em. I want both you boys to know that; that there’s nothing you could’ve done to change this. And I’m grateful, real grateful, that you’re helping me, but there are plenty of other folks that needed your help more than I do. All _I_ wanted was to get them out safe, so if you’re feeling bad, feeling guilty, because of seeing me in this state- and trust me, I know what a state I’m in- you should think about them instead. All of the women and Jack and John, hell, if you had done right by them, you could’ve treated me like shit and I wouldn’t’ve minded one bit,” Arthur’s voice had grown ragged and he stopped to clear his throat, the sound harsh and painfully dry, and then, less insistent than he had started, he finished, “Well, I don’t mean to rag on too much, we all know nothing can be changed now, but- if you’re in the mood for thinking, there’s something, I guess,”

The entire time Arthur spoke, Bill hadn’t looked up. He hadn’t even opened his eyes, but they had relaxed somewhat. As had his hand that gripped the canteen, and it was slightly damp now, and he rubbed the canteen dry with the soft, cuffed sleeves of his flannel shirt before he had time to fully witness what a mess he had made of himself. All his life, one mess after another, mistake after mistake after mistake. Several minutes he took to get his body back, his breathing steady, his still-racing heart less likely to make its escape. The canteen was half-empty. 

“Need another drink?” he offered; warm, miserable, tired. He glanced over. Arthur nodded. 


	14. Chapter 14

What had started with the pleasant crunch of frost-covered grass under his boots yesterday was hellish rain today. Yesterday, that had been the coldest day since leaving Colter, but at least it was beautiful. That semi-opaque glassiness of the frozen dew that coated all the plant life in the morning and melted away as the freezing night gave way to the less-freezing day, that was one of Javier’s favorite things about fall, about winter. It was rivaled by the sight of unblemished, untrodden snow that would stretch out for miles under sunlight and a brilliant blue sky, those rare times when it was deep enough that hardly any of the tall prairie grasses could poke through the top and break the illusion of a world remade in the night as a blank slate of glittering, blinding white. But the most wondrous sight of all, the very best that the cold had to offer,  _ that  _ was the aftermath of an ice storm, when every branch of every tree right down to the smallest twig was encased in it, looking like delicate baubles housed in a glass displays, drawing the eye to all the oft-ignored intricacies of their familiar form, though unlike a cloche set atop a trinket or a flower, it would only serve to injure the tree, break it, collapse it, kill it perhaps, not at all the guardian that it impersonated. But before any of that, at that point where they were just bowing under the weight and not yet breaking under it, the higher branches would sometimes form gleaming, otherworldly archways, and was there ever any catastrophe so magical, so magnificent?

But this day was none of that. It was dull, it was windy, it was wet, and it was even colder for all those reasons, and utterly irredeemable in its ugliness. Yesterday, that better day that Javier now longed for, that day had seen Charles off on a somewhat risky endeavor: a supply run. They had been talking about it, all four of them actually, surprisingly, for days now, Bill having first brought up the snow that might soon be upon them. Food for themselves, food for the horses, those were imperative. In all likelihood, hunting would still be possible in that weather, but it would be tougher, dangerous even, depending on how bad it got. A clear day would be fine, but a reprise of last May's blizzard? It would be better not to risk it, was Charles’ assessment, to get what they would need well before they wound up stranded and still needing it. And the horses still looked relatively fit now, but some more nutritious feed would be needed to keep them that way when grazing grew even sparser, that was Bill’s assessment. And seeing as Charles had  _ not _ robbed a train of many thousands of dollars of Army payroll and then sent it off a bridge and into a ravine in a very dramatic fashion only several weeks ago, it was Javier’s suggestion and everyone’s agreement that he be the one to finally head into town. 

Valentine, that was the town that Charles had decided upon. It was further away than Annesburg, but it would have more of what they needed; the mining town didn’t have a proper general store or stable. That was also where Dutch murdered Leviticus Cornwall, which according to the newspapers Charles had read, had caused quite the uproar. Both Fort Wallace and the oil fields, where Charles had been more personally involved in other little uproars, were nearer Valentine, but he had assured them, and Arthur especially, that he would avoid any trouble and make it back safely. That frost yesterday, that had made the need more urgent, and so Charles had set off early that morning.

He took Taima, of course, but Bill had also volunteered Brown Jack for the job. Hauling heavy bags of oats and other bulky foodstuffs, that would be made much easier with another horse to share the burden; it would broaden the range of what Charles could buy with the money they had pooled together. Brown Jack in particular would be very helpful, as he was both huge and very well-behaved even outside of his owner’s watch, neither of which were true for Boaz. It hadn’t even crossed Javier’s mind to send him along, he knew that as reliable as the stallion was for him, he could be quite stubborn for anyone else. He was always the type of horse to make his complaints known, and that was something Javier liked about him, at least until it grew inconvenient- but even then he still couldn’t help himself from liking it just a bit. A person couldn’t help but be a little prideful, being liked by an animal that didn’t like many people. It was like Dutch with The Count, except that Javier had always thought his little paint was even better than the high-strung Arabian, because Boaz had never hurt anyone that tried to ride him, he’d just ignore them or annoy them. He had warmed up to Bill, which was good, but Javier still had his doubts as to whether that would last if Bill actually tried getting in the saddle rather than just brushing him down and taking care of his hooves, and certainly he wouldn’t do as well with Charles as Brown Jack would. Wouldn’t fare as well in this weather as the other would, either. 

At the moment, Javier imagined his horse was just as put out as he was. There probably wasn’t ever any rain quite as torrential in Nevada, where Boaz had lived his first five years on a ranch outside Winnemucca until Javier picked him out after one of his first big jobs with the gang, his first time with real money in his pocket. From there, they’d traveled all across the western United States and spent a dozen seasons with each other. Boaz had been through plenty of biting wind and blizzards and rainstorms, and he’d withstood it well, he was from sturdy Mustang stock, but it had always seemed to Javier that he never relished in even the more pleasant snowy days, unlike most of the other horses. Certainly, on a day like this one, he must be missing the arid home he had left behind, had been taken out of.

And even snow would be preferable to this, no matter how much they had feared it, because maybe Javier wouldn’t be soaked to the bone if that was what was coming down. He had already made his way to a nice spot on the lake directly across from the cabin before it had become anything more than a half-hearted drizzle that went in and out. He’d looked at the sky, and as anyone would he had figured that as gray and as thick and furled as the clouds were there would be some precipitation, a day full of those same meager showers, perhaps, but never would he have anticipated this. Maybe he should've. Sheets of rain were pelting him from seemingly every angle thanks to the wind that had picked back up and sworn to spite him again, and the crash of the raindrops on the rocks and on the water was as deafening as it was ceaseless. But the fish liked the rain as much as he hated it, and if he didn’t catch anything now, there were only a couple cans of food left at the cabin to hold the three of them over until Charles returned. That might be today- that was the plan, that was what Charles had promised to Arthur- but realistically, there were a hundred things that could’ve delayed him, and if he had decided to wait out the rain, who could blame him? For as shitty as fishing in this weather was, Javier knew that riding with two loaded-down horses in it would be much, much worse, even if it was hard to imagine how anyone could possibly feel worse than he felt right now. 

Here he was, with a lure in the agitated water, waiting for a bite that should come any minute now and cursing under his breath with every minute that passed without one. He could feel the rain settling in; his poncho took the brunt of it for his chest, but the lower half of the sleeves of his jacket were drenched, and soon it would be into his shirt, and already his dark jeans were growing heavy with water, the denim clinging to his union suit, to his body, sapping the warmth out it. He could feel the earth under his boots turn to mud as he stood there, could feel himself shaking- from the cold or from the ever-mounting frustration or from some combination thereof. He had been out here far too long, and he chided himself for coming all the way out here. If he had stayed nearer the cabin, at least he could’ve ducked back in between casts and warmed up a bit. He could’ve started walking back as soon as it started coming down this hard, even that would’ve been better.

But he hadn’t done that, he had decided to stick it out for just one cast, or else he would’ve come all this way for nothing, and he couldn’t go back now, or else he would’ve waited all this time for nothing. So here he was, petulant and freezing, ignoring every corporeal impulse that pleaded with him to just give up, just go back, just be  _ reasonable _ . This was all that his commitment, his persistence, had gotten him: stuck with the aftermath of the decision he’d made, alone with his own poor judgment. 

Alone until a bite came, and eventually it did, after all those long minutes waiting, after over half an hour in the damnable rain. It was a strong one too, and at the feeling of that tug, Javier found himself a bit reinvigorated- if this went well, he would be back in front of the fire in no time, he could strip off his drenched clothing and lay it out to dry, he could bask in that warmth without worrying where their meal would come from. He pulled the rod upward forcefully, and from the way that his arms were then roughly yanked to the left, it seemed that the hook was set pretty well. Natural as anything, he fought against it, resisted as much as he could as the fish swam in one direction, and then the other. It needed to tire itself out, and surely it was one of those pikes on the line, nothing else in this lake would fight this long, this hard.

It might almost make up for this horrible day if he could manage to reel it in. It would all be worth it. Several times before, Javier had suspected he’d nearly had one of those monsters, but all had been unsuccessful: twice with a lure, the fish had gotten away, not hooked solidly enough, and a handful of times using the scraps of butchered animals as bait, the line had snapped. It vexed him, but it was also something to look forward to. The elation of catching one, he hoped- had to hope- that it would be an emotion greater than that of all his failures combined. 

It might happen today, because when the pike stopped resisting, Javier reeled it in as steady as he could, as fast as he could, and even with his slick hands, he made good progress. It was nearly half-way to the shore. And it might not happen today, because it got a second wind at that half-way point, and it fought even harder; it went back and forth again and again. It pulled the line out as far as it was when first Javier had set loose his cast, out near the small island that from here obscured his view of the cabin, and he had to let it keep pulling. There was no other option that didn’t risk the line breaking, he knew that now, was determined to learn from his past mistakes. He just had to endure longer, to keep his strength and his patience intact, and surely a man had greater fortitude than even a beast of a fish. 

A battle ensued. Every momentary pause of the pike was Javier’s to capitalize upon, but the opposite was true as well. They went back and forth, each opponent gaining a lead and then giving it up, edging nearer the shore and then pulling further away from it. But little by little, skirmish by skirmish, it seemed to Javier that finally, he was gaining the lead, that the pike was too exhausted to make up all his ground for several rounds now, and his realization that victory might soon be at hand was marked with a crash of thunder that reverberated through his body louder and longer than the sound of any gunshot ever had, the western sky behind him flashing with lightning as it did, brightening the dreary day for a split second. It caught him by surprise, as focused as he was, and he didn’t jump at the noise, but he tensed, froze momentarily, the hammering rhythm of his heart pounding in his chest leaping to the forefront of his mind, the echoey noise of it rising above even the screeching of the wind and the heavy raindrops leaving welts upon the water when the thunder’s aftershocks subsided.

The pike must have been frightened as well, because before he had even caught up with what was happening, the fish was pulling out the line with all its previous strength regained, rushing hard towards the left, towards the island, yet again. The addition of that tension had Javier trying to get things back on course, and he was forcing the straining rod to the right with every muscle in his straining arms. His premature excitement had quickly turned to resignation: he would have to exhaust the fish all over again, fight for every bit of incremental progress again. He would have to be out in all of this even longer. 

At his insistence, the pike headed towards the right instead, leaning into the pressure that he had upon it, pulling out the line even more before Javier was able to switch the direction of his own force, and as he did so, as they both wrenched as hard as they ever had upon the fishing line, the forming storm erupted for a second time. It was a croaking and protracted roar that rumbled through the valley less like the precise blast of a bullet, and more like the throaty growl or grunt of an animal, cornered and vicious. There was nothing else that Javier could hear during those long seconds that it shook the earth; for all he knew, his heart had stopped beating. He couldn’t hear the line snapping either, but when he was sent stumbling back from the sudden lack of tension on the rod, on his body, it was clear enough what had happened. It had broken as the last lingering groan of the thunder drew to a close, and he had managed on reflex to right his footing and stop himself from slipping on his muddy patch of shoreline when it did, and here he was, with nothing to show for all the time he’d spent, for all the aching in his arms, for all his water-logged clothing, for every extremity whose numbness had now become apparent. 

He’d resisted too much, he’d fought when he should’ve known to give, his focus had been interrupted, corrupted. He had promised himself that it would be different this time, with the day’s meal hanging in the balance, with a loathsome morning to remove himself from- and then it wasn’t. The tension from the line had migrated into his body: it was his face twisting and all of that shaking and those fists still clenched around the fishing rod and that pressing ache in his mind and his arms and behind his ribs that begged him to break something, hurt something. Even as it pained him to stand there and feel it tighten and coil in his chest, he didn’t give into the urge, didn’t throw the rod down, didn’t so much as kick the metal bucket beside him. The feeling would subside, he knew, and when it did, and the thunder crashed again, Javier began to collapse the rod, and he knelt in the mud to straighten the gear in the tacklebox, and as he did so, he paused a moment to mourn for the lure he had lost: a skinny wooden fish as long as his palm, whose underside faded from burgundy to deep, brownish-yellow by the tip of its tail, whose forest green body was striped with ochre, applied with a delicate hand, whose gills and mouth and eyes had been carved in three dimensions and brought to life with paint, red and black and white. All those hours, those careful and loving and patient hours that someone had spent whittling it, and every judicious selection of color made, and every stroke of a tiny paintbrush, sunk now at the bottom of the lake, where only the fish would ever see it again.

Soon, Javier started his journey back to the cabin, walking around the perimeter of the lake, and with every step he took he felt even colder, and the rain had never shown him any mercy, not even once, and he felt like he could cry, but he didn’t. When he got to the cabin, the door seemed to creak louder than it usually did, and certainly, when he shut it behind him, it was louder than usually it was. He’d entered from the front door, from the porch, not wanting to risk their bedrolls getting wet or muddy, and before he took even a second step inside he was removing his boots, after first peeling off his gloves and setting them on the table. It was somewhat tricky to do while still standing, and while he did so, he heard a heavy sound that he could only assume was Bill lifting himself off the ground. 

“Arthur just about shouted at me to go fetch you inside, but I told him the fishing must be really good for you to stay out there that long,” said Bill as he crossed into Javier’s view and leaned on the edge of the partitioning wall, the warm glow of firelight behind him, his skin pressed against the wood where the seam was split on the shoulder of his graying union suit, which he wore with his most hastily-mended pair of jeans and half the buttons on his chest undone. With the left boot now removed, Javier had looked up at him just in time to see his face fall as he took in the conspicuously fishless sight, and the smile had left his voice when he finished with: “Or not,”

“Almost had a big one, but the line broke,” Javier started on the other boot. 

“Damn,” Bill resettled his crossed arms as Javier set his boots aside against the wall to his right. He then took the few steps to the sink to rinse his hands off, conscious all the while of the bottom hems of his trousers that were similarly muddied, lifting his feet carefully so as to not have them tracking their filth onto the floor. With a light grip, he pumped the faucet, and the water that ran over his hands was even colder than the rain outside, colder than the dampness that felt like it had invaded every inch of his body, that had him still shivering, even in the much-desired warmth of the cabin. He ran the water until the water ran off his hands clear. Maybe all that tension hadn’t fled. The storm rumbled again, muffled only slightly by the walls now around him. 

“Well, I uh- I reckon you’ll get one eventually,” said Bill, and Javier could feel the man’s eyes upon him. He stared down at the dirty dishes in the basin. Cutlery, and a cup, and the plates from last night. 

“Maybe, but I guess I just don’t see how ‘eventually’ is gonna feed us tonight,” he said, the words spilling out quickly, bitterly. “Not that you ever seem too concerned about that,”

“Now what- what’s that supposed to mean, huh?” Bill sounded like he’d been caught off guard, his voice raising as he spoke.

Javier turned around to face him, leaning back against the sink. “I mean, what do you even _ do _ all day? Because by the end of the day, never seems like you have anything useful to add,”

“Well, today, I took care of _ your _ horse, and I had to finish clearing out one of those stalls for him, and I got more firewood and I moved a lot of it under cover so it wouldn’t get all soaked through, and I cleaned out the fireplace-”

“So nothing to eat, you mean?” interrupted Javier, something between a glare and grin on his face. "You got that big rifle, why don't you ever use it?"

“Why are you so goddamn worried about it?” Bill was on the verge of shouting, and his furrowed brow had gone from mostly confused to mostly angry in a matter of seconds. “Charles said he’d be back tonight and I got no reason to doubt him, but even if he ain’t, I imagine we can manage to go hungry for a night. Gone a lot longer than that before,”

“I’m not worried. I’m not,” placated Javier, throwing his hands up, “I’m just curious about why it is that you think you don’t have to pull your weight around here,” 

“I do. I do pull my weight, and I know that you know that or else you would’ve said something a hell of a lot earlier. If you don’t see the shit I do, then that’s your own damn fault,” 

“Oh, no, I get it, I mean- it must’ve been real hard for you to sleep through that storm while I was out there freezing my ass off in it,”

“Sleep through-? Well, I was out there doing my work a whole hour before you even woke up,” Bill had metered his voice back down to a volume just above his normal coarse speech, and he had no shortage of accusative pointing as he spoke. “And- and I’m sure  _ you _ must’ve worked real hard to not catch a single goddamn fish,”

Javier’s feigned and biting playfulness seized at those words, and he let out a heavy sigh as he became aware again of the heaviness of his wet clothing upon him, as he held his arms close to his chest, as he felt his own brow twisting, as he stared down at the floor and studied those dirtied hems. “It’s just, just days like this, where I think, and I have to think, y’know, ‘cause you don’t make it easy, I have to think- why is it that out of anyone, anyone in the world, that I’ve been stuck with you for so long? Years, years of this…”

He trailed off and directed a fleeting glance at Bill, whose stony face looked to be deep in thought, before returning his eyes to the floor, his arms still crossed over his chest, and he should probably take off his poncho, lay it out to dry pretty soon.

Bill started out slow. “You ain’t ever been stuck with me. If I’m too lazy for you, or too angry for you, or too much of a fucking moron for you- well- well, everybody's known that for a long time now, so me being here, that’s all on you. That’s all on you because you _ wanted  _ me here, you asked me to be here-”

Cutting off that feverish and breathless intensity, Javier, shaking his head, interjected forcefully. “No. No, I never said that, you were the one that followed me out of there. I never did that, never said I wanted you here. Who would?”

“That- that is a goddamn lie!” And there was the explosion that Javier had been waiting for, and he looked up, across the chasm of those few feet that separated the two of them, and Bill’s face was warped and reddened and ugly with his outrage, with his shouting, and true to form, there was also that shine of soon-to-be-loosed tears in his honey-brown eyes. “I remember it, so don’t you tell me that I don’t ‘cause I  _ know _ that I remember it.”

He looked hurt. Seeing that, Javier was as disgusted as he was satisfied. He felt his stomach turn, he felt some tension release, and then thunder rolled through the valley again, stealing Javier’s job of interrupting, and it was another drawn-out one, another snarl hanging in the air. He held Bill’s shaky gaze for as long as the other man let him, his own face flat, until the storm had quieted back to its usual drone of rain hitting the roof and Bill looked down, looked like he was trying to think of something more to say, looked like he was trying to hide. 

“Will you two  _ please  _ knock it off?” came Arthur’s voice, tired and disgruntled from across the cabin. Javier looked over Bill's shoulder to the bed, and he was mildly surprised, both that the man had managed to make his broken voice so loud, and also that he had been overhearing them at all- though if Javier had bothered to think about it at all, it was obvious that he would. It seemed that Bill took it as a dismissal: he let out a huff and headed brusquely to the door, taking his coat from the back of his chair as he did so. When he slammed the door shut behind him, it rattled the coat rack on the wall and the lamp on the table, and it sent the metal bucket on the floor toppling over. 

After a moment in relative silence, Javier started on undressing the rest of the way; his outwear, his shirt, and his jeans removed and tossed in a heap next to his fishing gear to deal with later. He crossed the cabin, and before finally finding his rest in the warmth of the fire, he made sure to push aside his bedroll, as even his union suit was damp. And if he caught a glimpse of his lined and scarred and unshaven face in that broken mirror while doing so, and if that glimpse looked like a stranger, and if that glimpse was too familiar, and if that glimpse delivered him his own fair share of unshed tears- then that was his alone to know. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very sorry that this took so long- I had an unexpectedly busy week, and my idea for this chapter took longer than I expected to complete, but I think I should be back on track with the next one.  
>  On another note, I would say a good portion of that idea was inspired by my first playthrough of the game where fishing with Hamish was the first legendary fish I ever caught, and the only fishing outside of the two story missions with it that I'd ever done, and it was similarly futile until I looked up a tutorial.


End file.
